LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Ohai), Copyright So. 

Slielf.,:B.-T 



-J— 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



WORK AND PLAY 



TALKS WITH STUDENTS 



BY 
/ 



JOHN E. BRADLEY, PH. D., LL. D., 

President of Illinois College 



BOSTON 

tlbe pilgrim ipress 

CHICAGO 



12398 



Library of Concjrert>- 

Two Copies Received 
JUN 29 19G0 

Copyright entry 
No 



SECOND COPY. 

Deliverwl to 

OROER DIVISION, 






Copyright, 1900, by 
J. H. TEWKSBURY 



^0 m^ wife, 

WHOSE ENTHUSIASM AND HELPFULNESS HAVE 

ENRICHED THE LIVES OF MANY STUDENTS 

AND INSPIRED ALL THAT WAS BEST IN 

MY OWN, THIS LITTLE BOOK IS 

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 





CONTENTS 






CHAPTER 




PAGE 


I. 


Student Life 




I 


II. 


Intellectual Growth . 




19 


III. 


Work . . . . 




35 


IV. 


Play . . . . 




49 


V. 


Health . . . . 




^3 


VI. 


Habit . . . . 




81 


VII. 


The Cost of Foundatic 


)NS 


lOI 


VIII. 


Unconscious Education 




121 


IX. 


Reserve Power 




■ 139 


X. 


The Scholar in Public 


Life 


' 157 


XI. 


Castles in Spain 


. 


175 


XII. 


What is Education .? 




193 



These familiar addresses were first given to the stu- 
dents of Illinois College. They were reported, and, 
most of them, first published in the College Rambler. 
After revision, they are now given to the larger public 
who are interested in student life and student aims. 

J. E. B. 

December, 1899. 



STUDENT LIFE 



Measure your 77iind''s height by the shade it casts. 

Robert Browning. 

The college, appealing immediately to the ?nental 
part, is yet to train every part. It is doing its 
duty only when it causes man to regulate appetite, 
to crush passion^ to guide desires, to quicken affec- 
tions, to prevent wrong, and to stiinulate right 

choices. 

President C. F. Thwing. 



STUDENT LIFE 

OTUDENT life presents many phases. 
Its special characteristics are strongly 
marked. An outside observer, misled by 
that which is most obtrusive, thinks of its 
gayety and its pranks, the noise and 
excitement which attend its intercolle- 
giate games, its festivities, and, perhaps, 
its mistakes. Those who are familiar 
with it, looking beneath its frolics and 
ebullitions, find a more serious side, rich 
with ambition and earnestness, but check- 
ered with doubts and misgivings. Hopes 
and fears, triumphs and defeats, are close- 
ly mingled on every college campus. 

Some of you are already familiar with 
the scenes of student life ; to others its 
experiences and its episodes will be com- 
paratively new. Such students may have 
come here with mistaken conceptions. 



4 Work and Play 

They have heard the stories which are 
told in every community of college 
excitements, college rallies, college 
** events," and these things have an un- 
due prominence in their ideas of student 
life. Let us understand, then, at the out- 
set that, in the college as in the outside 
world, industry and good habits attract 
little attention, while idleness, escapades, 
and every act which would fain be con- 
cealed have a wonderful facility of getting 
themselves reported. 

If our o-reat business here is not faith- 
ful and thorough work, we might as 
well pack our trunks and go home, and 
the college would better close its doors. 
But this kind of work is not published. 
It goes on unnoticed. It does not create 
a sudden disturbance and then mysteri- 
ously disappear around the corner. It 
joins in no rushes. It blows no horns, it 
rings no bells. But it is the principal 
factor in college life. It fills the time 
and engages the energies of most of us. 



Student Life 5 

It develops mental power and transforms 
character, but, like the great forces of 
nature, it usually works silently and un- 
observed. College life is not peculiar in 
this respect. The same fact holds in 
society at large. The manifold indus- 
tries of a city or village roll on unnoticed ; 
but let some scandalous event occur and 
it quickly seems to be upon every lip. 
The daily papers report it, the telegraph 
spreads it abroad. But they have noth- 
ing to say concerning the upright men 
and women who go steadily about their 
own business. 

A generation ago, college students had 
a wretched habit of expending their sur- 
plus energies in tearing up sidewalks, 
unhanging gates, carrying off signs and 
other dubious midnight performances. 
You have heard men relate, with a touch 
of glee and a touch of shame, the ex- 
ploits and the disgraces of their own 
college days. That these things should 
have so largely ceased is due, perhaps. 



6 Work and Play 

to the development of athletics and the 
introduction of the gymnasium. Vent is 
thus given to the exuberant vitality of 
youth and the way has thus been pre- 
pared for the more wholesome and manly 
sentiments which now prevail in most 
colleges concerning such disorders and 
riot. We welcome the change and would 
gladly make it complete and permanent. 
So let us not mistake that which is excep- 
tional, that which is trivial, or that which 
is unworthy for the main business which 
we have in hand. And let us all unite 
in a common purpose and an earnest 
endeavor to make our own lives and the 
general life of the college clean, manly 
and industrious. 

You who have come to college are 
picked men. You have been selected 
for leadership. You can be prepared 
for the unusual opportunities and respon- 
sibilities which await you only by faith- 
ful work. Your time is too valuable to 
be squandered in loafing or frivolity. 



Student Life 7 

You need it for your daily work and you 
will find it none too long to make sure 
that your friends will not be disappointed 
in the great ends which have brought 
you here. The college boy becomes a 
man, not before but during his student 
days. The fiber and the stamina of his 
future years depend on the grit and self- 
control which he throws into his college 
life. He will meet new temptations, but 
the same prudence and restraint which he 
has learned by practice at home will keep 
him upright and safe from wrong here. 

One of the diflferences between the col- 
lege life of to-day and that of former 
times consists in the greater freedom 
which is now given to students. You 
have been amused at the codes of minute 
college laws which used to be published. 
But the present freedom of students con- 
sists not merely in release from surveil- 
lance, in determining so largely for 
themselves how they will pass their time, 
what their interests and who their asso- 



8 Work and Play 

ciates shall be, and numerous details 
relating to their personal conduct, but 
also in the choice of subjects of study 
and in forming opinions on'moral social 
and religious subjects. 

When students entered college a gen- 
eration ago, they found a course of study 
prescribed for them which gave no op- 
portunity for selection of studies, and 
which consisted principally of those 
branches that were believed to possess 
the highest disciplinary value. The 
classics and mathematics were held to 
be nearly all that preparatory schools 
and colleges needed to teach. The 
analysis of words, the construction of 
sentences in their minor shades of differ- 
ence, and wrestling with intricate prob- 
lems were considered the true work of 
the student. By these things his accu- 
racy of thought, strength of reasoning, 
fairness of judgment and keenness of 
insight would be developed. 

Let us not undervalue what the col- 



Student Life 9 

lege did for its students thirty or forty 
years ago. It laid firm hold of the great 
truth that intellectual strength is better 
than mere acquisitions. It inculcated it 
with every lesson. But there are other 
important things. While discipline is a 
fundamental purpose in education, it is 
intimately related to certain subordinate 
ends which must not be overlooked. The 
mind, like the body, grows strong by vig- 
orous exercise. In the gymnasium you 
raise the vaulting bar inch by inch to 
train yourself to jump as high as you 
can. Intellectual strength comes not so 
much by a dull routine as by intense and 
earnest effort. As far as possible we 
should be interested in what we study ; 
we should see its relation and its uses. 
The knowledge to be gained should be 
such as will be devoured with avidity. 
Hence the value of the elective system 
of studies which is now, in one form or 
another, incorporated into the work of all 
American colleges. 



lo Work and Play 

Form the habit of interesting your- 
selves thoroughly in your work. Cuvier, 
when a student, was one day walking 
along the beach in his native Normandy 
when he observed a cuttlefish lying 
stranded on a hillock of sand. Attracted 
by the curious object, he took it home to 
dissect, working for weeks upon it, and 
thus began the study of mollusks which 
ended in his becoming the most eminent 
scientist of his day. Hugh Miller's curi- 
osity was excited by certain remarkable 
traces of extinct sea-animals in the old 
red sandstone. He studied, investiga- 
ted, and became a leader of scientific 
thought. It was necessity, he said, 
which made him a geologist. He could 
not stop studying. How readily and 
how completely was the interest of these 
men aroused ! Dr. Johnson defined a 
genius to be *'a man of large general 
powers accidentally determined in some 
particular direction." Students do their 
best work when they are interested. 



Student Life 1 1 

Their improvement depends not on their 
ability but on their effort. So be in 
earnest; throw vitality into your work. 
And while you thus gain strengdi and 
alertness of intellect, you will acquire 
and assimilate much that you will here- 
after be glad to know. You will not be 
** ever learning, and never able to come 
to the knowledge of the truth ;" you will 
see facts and laws in their relations and 
weave them unconsciously into your hab- 
its of thought. Such study will send you 
to the library and 3'ou will read, as you 
ought, with a purpose. The true love of 
reading, if not acquired in youth, is sel- 
dom gained at all. If the object of edu- 
cation is to make men and women cul- 
tured, it surely involves the copious 
reading of books and reading with real 
interest. And we may rest assured that 
while the great ends of mental discipline 
are thus incidentally attained, the treas- 
ures of knowledge, of sympathies and 
interests, thus secured, will prove of in- 



12 Work and Play 

estimable value. Is there any true man 
who does not rejoice for all he knows 
and wish that he knew more? How 
many there are who wish that they had 
learned more in youthful hours which 
were wasted in idleness or misdirection ! 
But let us not carry our elective sys- 
tem too far. There are students who 
seem to stretch it from studies to life. 
They elect not only what they will do but 
also when they will work. As they always 
try to elect the easiest subjects and seldom 
elect to work, they get very little out of 
their student life, and it is apt to come to 
a premature end. Extreme cases of this 
kind are, fortunately, rare ; but a tinc- 
ture of this weakness pervades the lives 
of too many. Let every true student 
make sure that he selects his studies be- 
cause he values them, not because they 
are easy ; and let him prove that he can 
work not only because he is attracted by 
the subject but also because it is his duty 
to work. College life ought to train 



Student Life 13 

him to buckle down to a disagreeable 
job, to stick to it till it is finished ; to 
distrust cleverness and put his faith in 
industry and earnestness. Let the stu- 
dent elect this course or that course, but 
let his work be vital. The college is made 
up of youth of superabounding life ; let 
their work illustrate and embody it. The 
atmosphere of college work, no less thar 
of college play, should be life, life ! 

College students may be divided into 
four groups. The first consists of men 
without intellectual aspiration and with- 
out positive convictions or purpose. 
They drift with the tide. They " cram 
to pass, they *' crib " to pass ; their only 
ambition is to get through. What little 
moral influence they have is bad. 

The second group is the middle class 
intellectually, morally and socially. 
They are not without self-respect and 
ambition, but their aims are low and 
their w^ork is commonplace. They would 
gladly stand high as students and as 



14 Work and Play 

men, but their interest is weak and fickle. 
They do not often rouse themselves to 
earnest work. 

The third group consists of men who 
toil with fidelity and often with painstak- 
ing assiduity. They rank high in schol- 
arship and are regular at all college 
exercises. No one can speak of them 
but with respect. Their failure is in not 
reflecting on what they learn and the 
lack of an absorbing interest. History 
is to them only history, literature is only 
literature ; the lessons in character and 
life which these teach are overlooked. 

The fourth class is also made up of 
earnest workers. But, while they may 
not surpass all others in intellectual en- 
dowments nor in exact scholarship, they 
are distinguished from them by broad 
sympathies and an enthusiasm which 
vastly enrich their work. They seek 
knowledge, definite and exact informa- 
tion. The effort to obtain it not only 
yields mental discipline, but they work 



Student Life 15 

with minds so open to truth in its com- 
pleteness and in its relations that they 
gain not merely information, learning, 
intellectual strength, but also that higher 
grace and power — culture. 

When Professor Tyndall was asked to 
name the formative influence which had 
been strongest in shaping his life, he 
quoted Nelson's appeal to his men just 
before the batde of Trafalgar — ''Eng- 
land expects every man to do his duty " — 
and said that the thought of duty had out- 
weighed all other motives in determining 
the work of his life. He could do what 
he believed he ought to do. No education 
is complete which does not teach one to 
be loyal to his convictions — obedient to 
the voice of duty. Religion cannot be 
taught ; it is a matter of personal choice 
and experience. But the persuasions to 
a religious life, " the forces which make 
for righteousness," are nowhere stronger 
than in the Christian college. The stu- 
dent who neglects these claims makes a 



1 6 Work and Play 

lifelong mistake, and he who fails to 
become a factor in the religious life of 
the college loses an immeasurable oppor- 
tunity. Moreover, if a man would see 
his life in all its possibilities, he must go 
up into the mountains of spiritual thought 
as Christ went up into the mountain alone 
to pray. He must take time to reflect, 
in prayerful recognition, upon his sacred 
importance and responsibility as a man. 
Metaphorically he may be '' a worm," 
but literally he is an immortal soul, cre- 
ated in the image of God and given 
boundless scope for growth and the ex- 
ercise of his godlike powers. What 
young man can really understand him- 
self and his relations to his fellow men 
and not be lifted above base and unwor- 
thy things? When he thus sees the true 
significance of his life will he not strive 
to make the most of it? Will he not 
realize his best self? 

As one advances in his college course 
he is apt to lind his judgment changing 



Student Life 17 

concerning many things. His estimate 
of men is different. The idols of his 
freshman year gradually sink into insig- 
nificance ; more mature reflection raises 
to first place men whose modest worth he 
had formerly overlooked. His clearer 
judgment and wider horizon give him 
better ideals of manhood and of culture 
than he had before. With this higher 
conception of what a true man should be, 
comes a vital question : Does his improve- 
ment keep pace with his ideal ? Is he sat- 
isfied with less than the best he can do? 

Character is cumulative. George Eliot 
says: '* We reiterate our lives in each 
new deed." 

" I looked behind to find my past 
And lo ! it had gone before." 

Fortunate is the man whose youth, 
wisely spent, has become for him a life- 
long spring of health and power. He 
will carry with him, amid life's burdens, 
the enthusiasm and the gladness of the 
true student. 
3 



II 

INTELLECTUAL GROWTH 



In life's small tkhigs be resolute and great 

To keep thy muscle trained; know 'st thou ivhen 

Fate 
Thy measure takes, or when she ''II say to thee, 
' I fi7id thee worthy ; do this deed for fne P " 

J. R. Lowell. 

" I would the s^reat world grew like thee. 
Who growest not alotie in power 
And knowledge, but by year and hour, 
In reverence and in charity y 

Alfred Tennyson. 



II 

INTELLECTUAL GROWTH 

T WISH to take a few minutes this morn- 
ing to talk familiarly with you con- 
cerning some of the conditions of intellec- 
tual and moral growth. Students often fail 
to receive the full benefit of their study 
and instruction because they do not know 
how to co-operate most effectively with 
their teachers in efforts for their own im- 
provement. There is no lack of willing- 
ness on their part — no lack of fidelity 
and skill on the part of their teachers, 
but simply a failure to put themselves in 
the position to receive the stimulus and 
mental uplift which might be obtained. 

We have all observed the difference in 
the intellectual progress of different stu- 
dents. One seems to grasp every subject 
with ease and certainty. His classmates 
point to him with pride. If we meet 



22 Work and Play 

him after an interval of a few months 
we are impressed with his intellectual 
growth. Another makes little progress 
and becomes a hard problem to himself 
and his friends and especially to his 
teachers. 

Now it is generally true that a student's 
advancement will be in proportion to his 
dihgence in study, and this is what we 
naturally expect. But it was not so in 
the case of General Grant, it was not so 
in the case of Henry Ward Beecher. 
And there have always been enough 
instances of successful men who were 
poor students to keep some excellent 
people busy explaining and to afford 
great comfort to lazy and conceited stu- 
dents who want the rewards of hard 
work without being willing to do the 
work. In this college we have an ad- 
vantaore over some institutions in that 
nearly all who are here have come with 
a desire and a distinct purpose to im- 
prove. There are schools in which other 



Intellectual Growth 23 

considerations prevail more largely, in- 
stitutions whose students have little ap- 
preciation of the value of a college train- 
ing. There are classes of people in 
every large community who have no 
aspiration for mental or moral improve- 
ment. Their feeling towards all that is 
above them is one of envy and hate, with 
no ambition to attain to excellence them- 
selves. Thus the philanthropic workers 
who are carrying on the Hull House and 
other social and college settlements in 
Chicago and New York find their first 
and most difficult duty to be that of in- 
spiring in the minds of those among 
whom they labor a desire for something 
better and a willingness to strive for its 
attainment. A college boy without am- 
bition is a discouraging subject for his 
instructor. If he cannot become inter- 
ested in his work, he might as well give 
it up. 

If, then, we desire to grow, let us try 
and apprehend clearly the conditions 



24 Work and Play 

and the means of growth. We shall 
thus be able to work intelligently to 
secure the desired end. 

There are certain processes of devel- 
opment which go on in us unconsciously. 
This passive growth is no more credit 
to us than our increase of stature or of 
avoirdupois. It probably never raises a 
person above mediocrity. The growth 
which leads to real excellence is always 
accompanied with conscious effort. 
Great men do not become such by idly 
waiting and wishing. There is much in 
heredity, but there is more in education 
and environment. No blood was ever 
blue enough to make a man eminent 
except as he himself strove to attain 
eminence. 

Intellectual growth requires, first, a 
consciousness of one's need of growth, 
and, second, a consciousness of one's 
capacity for growth. There are some 
people who feel no need of improvement ; 
they are self-complacent in the belief that 



Intellectual Growth 25 

they are great already. And there are 
multitudes whose sluggish and benighted 
minds never discover their own igno- 
rance and feebleness. It is only as one 
realizes his need that we can hope for 
his improvement. One of the most sal- 
utary processes which certain students 
undergo at the hands of their fellows is 
to have the conceit taken out of them. 
While the methods by wdiich this is 
accomplished cannot always be com- 
mended, and while we pity the victim, 
just as we would if he were having a 
bad tooth extracted, we are glad to have 
him cured of a disease which is worse 
than the toothache. 

But many who are conscious of their 
need distrust their capacity for growth. 
Faith in ourselves, in the capacity of our 
faculties to respond to the demands which 
will be made upon them, is no less essen- 
tial than the consciousness of our need 
of improvement. History abounds in 
inspiring examples of men who have 



26 Work and Play 

risen to eminence in spite of personal dis- 
advantages. When Beaconsfield, stam- 
mering through his first parliamentary 
argument, was at length coughed down 
by his jeering audience and compelled 
to take his seat, he exclaimed : " I yield 
to your ridicule to-day, but the time shall 
come when you will be glad to listen to 
me." If we may believe the stories 
which have been handed down to us, 
Demosthenes was accustomed for years 
to recite poems and orations as he ran 
up hill and to declaim in the face of the 
winds and the waves that he might 
strengthen his voice and lungs and 
overcome natural defects in his speech. 
It is safe to assert that no one ever at- 
tained to superiority who could not *' screw 
his courage to the sticking-point." We 
develop our powers by overcoming the 
difficulties which confront us. The solu- 
tion of a difficult problem in mathematics, 
the first participation in a society debate, 
the successful dash in a football game, all 



Intellectual Growth 27 

test and develop an ability to accomplish 
a purpose. "All progress," says von 
Ranke, the German historian, *' whether 
of individuals or of nations, has been 
through conflict." 

A symmetrical character implies an 
even balance between self-confidence 
and modesty. An excess of either is a 
serious, often a fatal, barrier to success. 
He who is over-confident gives offense 
by his arrogance and neglects the pre- 
paration necessary to successful perform- 
ance. He who is self-distrustful cannot 
rouse his powers to their fullest exertion, 
magnifies the obstacles in his way and 
yields to difficulties which might be over- 
come. Henry Clay was content to be 
a grocer's clerk until he was suddenly 
awakened by a strange personal experi- 
ence to the possibilities which lay slum- 
berincr within him. Then he roused 
himself and determined to surmount 
every obstacle. 

The true means of intellectual and 



28 Work and Play 

moral growth is, then, vigorous effort 
towards a definite end. A clear aim and 
an earnest purpose must go hand in hand. 
A certain half-truth current nowadays 
declares that *' we learn to do by doing," 
and there is an old maxim which says 
that practice makes perfect. But it de- 
pends on the kind of practice whether it 
makes perfect or not. We do not always 
learn to do by doing. You have seen 
pages of school-boys' copy-books where 
every line grew poorer from the top to 
the bottom of the page. Sometimes 
practice results in listlessness, sometimes 
in celerity rather than in good work. 
There are men whose business requires 
them to sign their name so often and so 
rapidly that their signature is almost 
illegible. We find many persons who 
have done one thing so long that they do 
it poorly. They take little interest in 
their work and it becomes a dull routine. 
Mere repetition makes men mechanical 
rather than skilful. Practice makes 



Intellectual Growth 29 

perfect when there is a definite aim. We 
must clearly apprehend the exact thing 
to be done ; we must muster our energies 
to do it most effectually. Did you ever 
watch the pitcher in a baseball game? 
How his eye guides his hand as he sends 
the ball spinning past the bat? A good 
pitcher illustrates the kind of practice 
which makes perfect. The intellect and 
the will must unite in vigorous action if 
we are to learn to do by doing. 

The conditions of mental growth are 
few and simple, but they are important. 
In general they are the same as those 
of physical growth. The body cannot 
grow without food ; neither can the mind. 
The farmer fattens his steers by feeding 
them well ; he cannot raise large animals 
without giving them an abundance of 
good food. But he also looks carefully to 
other conditions. He gives them appro- 
priate exercise. If one of his colts is to 
be a racer, he tests his speed from time 
to time on a good track. He notes the 



30 Work and Play 

effects of different kinds of food and diff- 
erent forms of exercise. 

The training of a thinker involves the 
same conditions as the training of a racer. 
The student must have mental nourish- 
ment, food for thought; that is, he must 
learn facts. Lack of information causes 
feeble thinking, obscure thinking. It is 
only when facts are clearly apprehended, 
when they are known in their relations, 
that they will be fairl}^ and vigorously 
considered. But practice, judicious ex- 
ercise, is also needed. The mind must 
be trained to ease and clearness in ac- 
quiring information : it should be nimble 
and Argus-eyed ; it should also sift and 
classify its acquisitions. Unclassified 
knowledge, unassimilated facts, hinder 
and enfeeble thought. It is only when 
truth is seen in its relations that it truly 
educates. 

Mistakes have often been made just at 
this point. Some have over-estimated 
the importance of acquiring facts ; others 



Intellectual Growth 31 

have given undue emphasis to drill. It 
has been thought that better results, or 
quicker results, would be obtained by 
omitting one or the other of these factors. 
Some have magnified the element of ex- 
ercise ; they have likened education to 
gymnastics ; mental training has been 
believed to consist in the rapidity with 
which certain acts are performed ; they 
would have every teacher a drill-master. 
But they forget the element of acquisi- 
tion, that the mind must have materials 
with which to work. Perhaps the black- 
smith could harden the muscles of his 
arm and make it strong by merely pound- 
ing the anvil, instead of working to fashion 
the hot steel. But it is not so with mental 
effort. The exercise which strengthens 
the mind has a purpose. Aimless repe- 
tition makes the mind dull and mechan- 
ical. Mental training is not like turning 
a crank ; it is rather like the athlete's 
spring, like the racer's dash. Lessing 
uttered only a half-truth, or a truth which 



32 Work and Play 

has often been misapplied, when he said 
that if he held truth like a bird in his 
hand he would let it fly away that he 
might catch it again, since it is the pur- 
suit of truth, he says, which is valuable, 
rather than the truth itself. But truth is 
desired because of its value in itself or in 
its applications. Modern industry has 
been developed by utilizing the truths 
which science has sought out. Scholar- 
ship is the reward which comes to him 
who has found and appropriated many 
truths. The mind grows strong in the 
process if the search for truth is intelli- 
gent and thoroughly in earnest. The 
truth must be worthy of the pursuit ; it 
must call forth the mind's best energies. 
Hence the value of interest in study ; 
listless or aimless study yields no 
strength. Select studies in which you 
feel a spontaneous interest, if you can ; 
if not, create an interest. College days 
ought to yield us an enduring enthusi- 
asm in some department of study. It 



Intellectual Growth 33 

often happens, indeed, that the early- 
enthusiasm thus gained leads to valuable 
results in after life, or determines one's 
future callincr. 

Have you a lesson or a class exercise 
to prepare? Set before yourselves the 
hinrhest standard ; be content with no 
slovenly work. Bring all the energies 
of your mind to the preparation. Train 
your faculties to respond to your demands 
upon them as the pitcher trains his mus- 
cles. Do not allow yourselves to spend 
two hours upon what should be done in 
forty minutes. Permit no interruption, 
no wandering thoughts. Learn to con- 
centrate all your powers and compel 
them to act every time with their utmost 
vigor. This is the secret of growth. 

4 



Ill 

WORK 



" Work is my 7'ecreation, 

a delight like that 
Which a bird feels in flyings or a fish 
In darting through the waters 

H. W. Longfellow. 

* ' The law of jiature is that a certain qnantity of 

work is necessary to produce a certaiji qtiantity of 

good. If you want knowledge, you must toil for 

it ; if food, you must toil for it ; and if pleasure^ 

you jnust toil for it.'''' 

John Ruskin. 



Ill 

WORK 

A YEAR or two ago, Edward Everett 
Hale published an article in one of 
the magazines entitled '* Getting the Best 
of It." It was of special interest because 
it was understood to describe his methods 
of daily work. If it had enabled him to 
accomplish so much, why would it not 
be serviceable to others? The article 
attracted much attention, and while some 
doubted the practicability of his pro- 
gram, all agreed that each day's work 
should be so planned as to yield the 
largest possible result with the smallest 
possible expenditure of nervous energy. 
No one can measure the power of work. 
It is work that has built up the world's in- 
dustries and carries them on, organized 
its vast systems of transportation and ex- 
change, filled its warehouses with goods 
and provisions and carried comfort and 



38 Work and Play 

contentment into millions of homes. A 
laborer puts in his spade to dig a trench. 
He can remove but a few pounds of 
earth at a time, but he perseveres and in 
a few days he sees a goodly piece of 
work accomplished. A student looks at 
the well filled shelves of a library and 
says to himself: *' No one can read all 
these books ; I might as well give up try- 
ing to know anything. There is so 
much to learn in every department of 
study that I am discouraged before I 
begin." But we have all heard of the 
man who read the seven volumes of 
Rawlinson's Ancient History during the 
tedious moments when he was waiting 
for his meals, and a busy young man, 
who was carrying more than the re- 
quired amount of college work, found 
time this year in the leisure hours of 
two months to read five thick volumes of 
history. It only requires time and well 
directed work to make almost any one of 
us a learned man. 



Work 39 

Great men have always been great 
workers. The essential characteristic 
of strong manhood is power of accom- 
plishment. It is not wealth nor official 
position, but brains and work that take 
first rank. Not long ago two important 
positions became vacant at the s^me 
time in a great business office. One 
man was appointed to fill both positions 
at a salary higher than the combined 
salaries of both of his predecessors. His 
ability, in one sense, was no greaterthan 
theirs ; but he was known to be an ex- 
traordinary worker. He was more valu- 
able to his emplo3^ers than two common 
men. The highest working power 
stands at the head. 

A strange mistake in the interpreta- 
tion of Scripture has taught us to look 
upon work as a curse. Human pride 
and laziness readily accept this view. 
But reason and science, as well as the 
Bible, teach us that a life of work is 
man's normal condition and his greatest 



40 Work and Play 

blessing. Much of the folly, misery and 
crime of the world are the result of idle- 
ness. It is difficult even to provide 
needed leisure for working men with- 
out bringing with it unseemly vices. 
Christianity honors work, exalts it, dis- 
tinguishes it from labor. Wor/e implies 
intelligence, implies a purpose, implies 
hope; labor is blind, unthinking, aim- 
less. The Latin word labor has come 
down to us from a heathen civilization 
and still carries in its meaning the taint 
of heathen hopelessness and oppression. 
Christianity teaches man to work out his 
own salvation. It sets before him a 
thousand possibilities of improving his 
condition ; it cultivates ambition and 
then it bids man work ; and it teaches 
that patient work yields grand results, 
not only in material products but also in 
intellectual enjoyment and in strong, 
well balanced character. 

The gentleman of leisure is not ordi- 
narily the highest kind of a man. Un- 



Work 41 

less he has retired from his business or 
profession after many years of industri- 
ous activity, he will rarely show robust 
and manly character. The very enjoy- 
ment of our vacations depends upon the 
vigor with which we have been working. 
A real vacation can only be earned by 
work. The best time of our livinef is 
the time of working, when we are sum- 
moned to put forth our most earnest 
efforts to meet the duty of an appointed 
hour. Why should we despise a daily 
routine? Few men are ever happy with- 
out it. Let us prize most the education 
which fits us for earnest, manly work. 

Napoleon could go through the man- 
ual of arms better than any soldier in 
his army, he could make or repair any 
article used in his campaigns, he was 
gifted with marvelous foresight and in- 
tuition, but his real genius consisted in 
extraordinary ability to work ; — now gal- 
loping to the head of his army to cheer 
his soldiers by his presence, now stop- 



42 Work and Play- 

ping to consult with a field-marshal, 
now looking after the baggage-train in 
the rear and, when a halt was made, 
sitting surrounded by his secretaries 
more than half of the night, answering 
inquiries, preparing orders and planning 
the details of his campaign. 

Garfield was eloquent, poetic, versa- 
tile, but his strength consisted in the 
ability to do an enormous amount of 
work. The librarians of Congress tell, to 
this day, of the remarkable number of 
books he used to consult when he was 
in the House. He w'ould send for a 
hundred volumes at a time ; and when he 
made a report or a speech on an impor- 
tant bill that was pending, it would 
appear that he had found something for 
his use in every one of the books. 

The late Dr. Philip SchafFwas a mar- 
velous worker. Perhaps no pen has 
been so productive in this countr\^ as his, 
while the quality of his work is attested 
by the fact that when he visited the 



Work 43 

World's Fair some years ago he found 
in the little library of five thousand 
books which were deemed the best ever 
published in the United States fifteen of 
his own books. And yet he was never 
hurried ; he had time to frequent liter- 
ary clubs, had leisure for the most 
delightful social relations and he ren- 
dered a great variety of services to the 
public and to the Church. 

Since, then, work is so powerful, so 
important a factor in our lives, our col- 
lege days ought to yield, _;fr5/, the ability 
to work effectively and, second^ the love 
of work. 

I. Our education should not be ex- 
clusively intellectual. 

How often do men's best thoughts and 
purposes fail of realization from lack of 
ability to carry them into effect 1 That 
young men should learn to think is well ; 
that they should learn to act is better. 
They should learn in school and college 
the secret of accomplishment, how to 



44 Work and Play 

escape discouragement and defeat, how 
to achieve successes that will endure. 
Each obscure passage in the Greek or 
German, each knotty problem in mathe- 
matics, ought to be regarded as a sort of 
challenge which it would be disgraceful 
to decline. Students should acquire the 
habit of investigating for themselves, of 
setting themselves deliberately to work 
to find out in the library or laboratory 
the exact truth which they need to know. 
They should learn to overcome difficul- 
ties, to rouse their energies and hold 
each practical problem firmly in hand 
until its perplexities disappear. The 
old-fashioned virtue of perseverance 
should be cultivated. Young men 
should be ready to declare with Car- 
dinal Richelieu that ''in the bright 
lexicon of youth there is no such word 
asy^/7." The proof of will-power is the 
ability to succeed. 

2. College training ought to enable us 
to overcome a dislike of work. The 



Work 45 

element of inertia is pretty strong in 
most people and they accept work as 
a necessity which they would gladly 
escape. Since it is a necessity for 
most, a true philosophy w^ould teach 
us to welcome and enjoy, not to resist, 
it. Those who try to do this usual- 
ly find that they become interested in 
the work, whatever it may be, and idle- 
ness becomes distasteful and oppressive ; 
they are able to exclaim with Lord 
Chancellor Coke ^^ Labor ipse volun- 
tas.''' It is safe to say that unwilling 
work is usually poorly done and he who 
would put forth his best energies must 
become so interested as to find zest and 
inspiration in his work. 

To assist you in making the work of 
each day as easy and effective as possi- 
ble, perhaps you will find these sugges- 
tions helpful. 

{a) Remember that each day will 
bring its own work. A distinguished 
graduate of this college, Hon. Newton 



46 Work and Play 

Bateman, says that when he was a stu- 
dent he could saw two cords of wood in 
a day, but that if he was idle one day he 
could not saw four cords the next day. 
If you are to be successful students, you 
will find your time pretty full. Resist 
encroachments upon it. Keep a little 
in advance of your work. Gain your 
leisure before you take it. 

(3) Learn concentration. If you can 
prepare a lesson thoroughly in one hour, 
don't spend two hours upon it. Compel 
your mind to put forth its best energy. 
Permit no interruption while you are en- 
gaged in study. I once saw a student 
completely absorbed in his work while 
five or six fellows were lounging and 
chatting in his room, but even he would 
have found it easier and more beneficial 
to study alone. The habit of two or 
more students getting out their lesson 
together does not tend to develop the 
best working ability. 

(c) Be systematic. Have regular 



Work 47 

hours for study, regular hours for exer- 
cise, regular hours for sleep. Do not 
depend upon impulse, but rather train 
your impulse, your interest in the thing 
to be done, to come to your aid at the 
right time. If you cultivate the habit of 
devoting the same hours each day to the 
preparation of certain lessons, reading in 
the library at certain hours and having 
fixed hours for all your work, you will 
find the interest rising at the right time 
to make your work easy, as surely as 
your appetite will return at meal-time. 

{d) Don't be bafiled. Train yourself 
to succeed, not to fail. If you cannot 
surmount obstacles in one way, try an- 
other. It is the bulldog grip that wins. 
When the cultured young Governor Rus- 
sell of Massachusetts said at a Harvard 
dinner that he would rather hear that 
Harvard had won in an intercollegiate 
game of football than in an intellectual 
contest, he did not intend to disparage 
high scholarship or literary excellence, 



48 Work and Play 

but rather to exalt that strength of will 
which is a prerequisite to success in any 
undertaking. If you have convictions, 
live up to them. If life presents a prob- 
lem, solve it. If tasks and difficulties 
rise mountain-high, tunnel through them. 
There are few thincrs which work in- 
spired by faith and hope cannot accom- 
plish. 

" To thine own self be true 
And it must follow as the day the night 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 



IV 
PLAY 



^'A day for toil, an hour for sport.''"' 

R. W. Emerson. 

' ♦ Our pleasures and our discontents 
Are rounds by which we 7nay ascend.'''' 

H. W. Longfellow. 

' * If those who are the enemies ofin7tocent amuse- 
ments had the direction of the world, they would 
take away the spring and yotith, — the former 
from the year, the latter fro7n the hiunan life.'''' 

Balzac. 



IV 

PLAY 

T^HE subject of one of our recent 
chapel talks was Work. It may 
have seemed like a rather heroic topic, 
but I think we all agree that our success 
in life will depend largely on our ability 
to do a large amount of good work. 
Every year increases the importance of 
working power. A college training ought 
certainly to yield good results in this 
direction. Carlyle says : '* The only 
happiness a brave man ever troubles 
himself about is happiness enough to 
get his own work done." 

But, fortunately, life is not all made 
up of work. No one can work inces- 
santly, and the attempt to do this always 
defeats itself and often brings its own 
swift penalty. He who would acquire 
and retain great capacity for work must 



52 Work and Play 

beware lest he lose the very power which 
is so valuable to him. The ability to 
work well implies the ability to rest well. 
Health is fundamental. A famous wit 
once said : '* If I was to pick out a wife 
for the Crown Prince of England, I 
would ask first, 'Does she sleep well?' 
second, 'Does she eat plain food?' and 
if so, I 'd tell the prince to take her and 
be thankful for whatever other good 
qualities she possessed." 

Primitive man lacks power of applica- 
tion ; he acts from impulse, as he is 
incited by hunger, love or hate. " There 
is danger," says Herbert Spencer, '* that 
civilized man will lose the power of re- 
pose, of the ability to enjoy the present 
good in his eager strivings for the fu- 
ture." 

We want health and heartiness and a 
bounding pulse. Many people are cyn- 
ics without knowing it. They are under- 
vitalized, overworked — victims of worry 
and borrowed trouble. Their friends 



Play 53 

sometimes think them profound, but who 
would not rather be superficial and shal- 
low than to be morose and cynical in 
order that he might be thought deep? 

The opposite of work is not idleness, 
but play. Nature's penalty for idleness 
is no less stern than for overwork. She 
demands the joyous alternation of work 
and play. Every person whose life is to 
be robust and hearty must have his peri- 
ods of play. Recreation must turn his 
thoughts into new channels, relieve the 
pressure upon the brain and the tension 
upon the nerves, and give tone and vigor 
to the muscles and vital organs. 

I am sorr}^ for the man who no longer 
likes to play. He has lost one of the 
most precious gifts with which nature 
endowed him. God intended that we 
should live in the sunshine, not grope 
about in clouds and shadows. It is a 
credit to a person's physical and moral 
condition that he likes to be amused. 

Some one has said that it is work that 



54 Work and Play 

transforms a boy into a man ; but it is 
also to be said that the boy of -promise 
plays. If any boy says that he would 
rather sit and study than to go to the 
playground, take a good look at him. 
Either he is sick, or prematurely devel- 
oped, or he is a little humbug, trying to 
get credit for studious tastes under false 
pretenses. If his schoolmates are at 
play, he ought to be squirming in his 
chair and impatient to join them. Un- 
less he is a poor, premature little book- 
worm, with flabby muscles and quiver- 
ing nerves, he is an incipient little pre- 
tender. ** Man made the school; God 
made the playground," says Walter 
Bagehot. 

So, I say, do n't be ashamed of the 
fact that you love to play and that you 
sometimes leave vour lessons behind 
with a sense of relief, and hurry away 
to the athletic field or the gymnasium, 
or to the familiar haunts of your friends 
and playmates. Do not become prema- 



Play 55 

turely blase, and look on with a lazy 
indifference and superiority while others 
amuse themselves. 

Military drill and the systematic train- 
ing of the gymnasium are excellent; no 
one should undervalue them ; but real 
play is better. It was noted, years ago, 
by Dr. Wiese, that the young men of 
Rugby and Eton did not play in order 
to develop their muscles, expand their 
lungs, quicken their circulation, improve 
their figures, or add grace to their bear- 
ing. They thought of none of these 
things. They simply played, from the 
mere love of playing, and all these and 
many other benefits were the results. 

Why is the little child so ceaselessly 
active ? Every muscle is called into exer- 
cise. To the ordinary observer, it seems 
like a perpetual but meaningless use of 
half-developed organs. Sometimes the 
restlessness and noisy ways of the little 
ones disturb older people, and attempts 
are made to check them. But, fortunate- 



56 Work and Play 

l}', the natural impulse is too strong, and 
such efforts are largely unsuccessful. 
The appetite for play, for amusement, 
for exercise, is no less fundamental in 
our constitution than the appetite for 
food. It is implanted for a purpose, 
and subserves an end which must be as 
important as its phenomena are strik- 
ing. What is this purpose? 

The first answer to this question is 
that the impulse to play secures physical I 

development. The bodily frame is to be I 

built up and made strong and supple for 
use. The law of its growth is exercise. 
The love of play secures it. The sense 
organs are also trained. Many sports 
are as admirably adapted to train and 
quicken the senses as they are to 
strengthen the muscles. 

Play trains the intellectual powers. 
In few persons does the intellect ever 
attain its full development. It is like an 
organ of many keyboards and stops ; 
the danger is that its possessor will ac- 



Play 57 

quire the use of only a small part of 
them. Education consists largely in 
awakening these slumbering powers and 
revealing the harmonies which nature 
makes possible. Play brightens the 
mental processes, and adds gladsome 
tints to activities which would otherwise 
be prosaic. 

Play cultivates a habit of glad and 
generous appreciation ; a disposition to 
be easily pleased ; a joy in companion- 
ship and intellectual converse. What is 
more valuable than a cheerful spirit and 
a ready sympathy ? Nature intends that 
the impulse to play shall quicken the 
lighter emotions, and infuse gladness 
and vivacity and sparkle into the mind's 
activities. Those who play together 
quickly become friends. 

The sports of childhood and 3'^outh 
train the will. Games of streno-th or 
skill appeal to each contestant to put 
forth his utmost efforts. Aijain and 
again the test recurs, and each time the 



58 Work and Play 

will marshals all the forces at its com- 
mand to attain the end desired. Thus 
the man learns in his youth to meet com- 
petitors, to surmount obstacles, to face an 
opponent, to unite his efforts with those 
of others. 

Play lays the foundation for strength 
by the exercise which it calls forth, — 
strength of body, strength of mind, — and 
then it trains and invicforates the direct- 
ive power which is to use it. 

Such, in brief, are some of the uses of 
play. It is the recruiting-officer and 
drill-sergeant of all the physical, mental 
and moral powers. While it springs 
from an irresistible impulse, it contrib- 
utes to the highest rational ends. 

But this love of play must be con- 
trolled — subordinated to worthy aims. 
Suppress it and you dwarf every intel- 
lectual and moral power ; give it free 
rein — full control — and it defeats its own 
ends, loses its charm, and becomes a 
source of weakness and ruin. Play is a 



Play 59 

necessity, a delight, but it must be in- 
dulged with due subordination to the 
higher ends of growth and character. 

Three principles may guide us in the 
pursuit of recreation : 

1. Play should be invigorating. Its 
purpose is to promote cheerfulness, buoy- 
ancy, and a healthful glow. If it is ath- 
letic, it should quicken the circulation 
and purify the blood. If it is mental, it 
should be interesting enough to divert 
the thoughts from their previous chan- 
nels. If it is both athletic and mental, 
double benefit will be received. It should 
be hearty and somewhat exciting ; it fails 
of its purpose if it is too quiet and pas- 
sive. Loafing is not play. 

2. Play should be innocent — not harm- 
ful to ourselves or to others. Here is a 
young man w^ho likes to play certain 
games, but who says they are not inter- 
esting enough unless he stakes some 
money on the result. If he does that, 
he is making a fatal mistake, and enter- 



6o Work and Play 

ing the path which is trod by spend- 
thrifts and gamblers — a steep decline 
from which few escape. Another, re- 
joicing in his strength, craves the excite- 
ment of personal encounter. Hence we 
find students in the German universities 
fighting a kind of sham duel, and young 
men in certain American colleges taking 
their exercise with boxing-gloves. But 
we have prize-fighters enough without 
trying to develop them in our institutions 
of learnincj ! Let us choose amusements 
which will not create in us low tastes 
or false standards of right and wrong. 

3. Play should not be excessive. No- 
where is self-control more important than 
in those amusements which tempt us to 
excess. A few years ago the name of a 
certain young man was known ail over 
the country. He was famous in several 
lines of college athletics. His whole 
soul was in them. But his interest in 
other and more important things was 
lost, and his college course was a fail- 



Play 6 I 

ure. His enthusiasm for athletics was a 
good thing, if properly controlled. Not 
so controlled, it became the rock on 
which he was shipwrecked. One's rec- 
reations afford a test of character. The 
strong man puts them in their true place. 
They are an incident, a pleasant change 
in the routine of his daily life. He en- 
joys them keenly, but he gives them up 
at the proper time. The weak man is 
absorbed by his amusements, and for- 
gets everything else. They usurp the 
place of his work, blind his reason, and 
stifle his conscience. 

It is said that football originated in 
Yale college fifty or sixty years ago 
in an effort to prevent brutality. The 
freshman and sophomore classes were 
having trouble, and a collision and a 
free fight were imminent. The seniors, 
jealous for the good name of the college, 
acted the part of peacemakers, and ar- 
ranged for a trial of strength by a foot- 
ball match between the classes. This 



62 Work and Play 

was the old game of football. Twenty- 
five or thirty years later, Rev. Dr. D. S. 
Schaff brought to this country the new 
Rugby game which has become so 
popular. It is a rough game. For ig- 
norant or clumsy players it is a dan- 
gerous game ; but, when the Duke of 
Wellington, late in life, sat watching a 
game of football among the students of 
Eton college, he said : " There's where 
the battle of Waterloo was won." 

Amusements are a necessity, relieving 
an overburdened mind, restoring elas- 
ticity and vigor. They are a discipline 
of judgment, of temper, of will. They 
brace the body and calm the spirit. 
They keep the heart young, the tastes 
simple, the sympathies warm. Without 
them the body, mind and spirit alike 
lose their rightful gladness and tone. 



V 
HEALTH 



■i 



' ' T/ie 7norality of clean blood oitght to be one of 
the first lessotis taught its. The physical is the sub- 
stratiwi of the spiritual', and this fact ought to ^ive 
to the food we eat and the air we breathe a transcend- 
ent significa^tce.'''' 

John Tyndall. 



V 

HEALTH 

"LJEALTH is said to be wealth. It is 
more ; it is the foundation of every 
blessing in life. Wealth, scholarly at- 
tainments, even life itself, lose half their 
value without this priceless gift. In pur- 
suit of health, people give up the com- 
forts of home and the companionship of 
friends, travel to distant lands and live 
in lonely retreats. Once lost, no search 
is too difficult, no price too great to pay 
for its recovery. 

And yet with what recklessness and 
prodigality this treasure is squandered ! 
The number of oreventable diseases is 
enormous. In this age of scientific re- 
search, when the secret germs of so many 
diseases have been discovered, it is still 
said by a high medical authority that 
ninety-six per cent, of the deaths in this 
6 



66 Work and Play 

country are premature and unnecessary. 
The best physicians devote themselves 
more and more to the prevention rather 
than the cure of disease. It is to be hoped 
that the time will come when we shall pay 
our doctors as we do our pastors, to keep 
us well and doing well, rather than to 
cure us when we fall sick. Those of 
you who are looking forward to the study 
of medicine may readily realize that a 
full collecre course affords none too much 
preparation for the profound investiga- 
tions which must be carried on by the 
physician of the coming day. No man 
needs wider information or deeper in- 
sight than he who guards the life and the 
health of his fellow men. 

Assuming, then, that most sickness is 
unnecessary, that it is, generally, our 
duty to be well and OKr sin, or some other 
person's sin, if we are sick, let us glance 
briefly at some of the conditions of good 
health. Of course a treatise on hygiene 
cannot be compressed into the limits of a 



Health 6^ 

familiar talk, but, confining our attention 
to the personal aspects of the matter and 
to those things which especially relate 
to student life, a few points may be em- 
phasized. 

Hygiene has been defined as the 
science which teaches people to take the 
ounce of prevention instead of the pound 
of cure. Of course the ounce of preven- 
tion is not always pleasant to take. Peo- 
ple persuade themselves that it is a need- 
less precaution, that the dose is too large 
or too bitter, or that it will be more agree- 
able at some other time. Sometimes the 
ounce seems so trivial as to be of no con- 
sequence, and so it is forgotten or neg- 
lected till suddenly the pound of cure 
becomes necessary. Surely we must 
count that education poor and incom- 
plete which does not train to good judg- 
ment and self-control in the care of the 
health. " Be watchful over your body," 
says Descartes, *'if you would rightly 
exercise your mind." Let us select a 



6S Work and Play 

few practical points as worthy of special 
consideration. 

I. Food and Drink. These are the 
foundations of life ; they have peculiar 
relations to our health. No small part 
of the diseases which afflict mankind 
spring from the misuse of food and drink. 
Lest, in the press of other interests, we 
should forget these necessities of our 
nature, two sentinels have been placed 
on guard to remind us from time to time 
of our danorer. One of these sentinels 
we call hunger, the other, thirst. But 
while the}^ are pretty sure to tell us when 
we need to eat or drink, they cannot 
always be relied upon to tell us when to 
stop eating and drinking. The tempta- 
tions of cooks, caterers and distillers do 
more to shorten human life than all the 
contagious and inherited diseases the 
doctors know. 

Moreover, appetite, which ought to be 
a faithful guide, is easily suborned and 
made the efficient allv of our deadliest 



Health 69 

enemies. The world presents no more 
revolting spectacle than the man who has 
become the degraded slave of appetite. 
Thousands of people go through life 
dyspeptic and handicapped, because in 
youth they were unwilling to practice a 
little self-restraint in the use of various 
palatable but indigestible dishes and 
condiments ; while other thousands lay 
the foundation in 3'outh of lifelong mis- 
ery and disgrace by learning to tamper 
with alcoholic drinks. He who eats too 
much takes a step towards the contempt- 
ible vice of gluttony. He who acquires 
an appetite for intoxicating drinks lights 
a torch to burn his own dwelling. There 
can be no temperate use of poisons. 
Every city and town in the land affords 
staggering, bloated, loathsome illustra- 
tions of the destruction of health and 
manhood by indulgence in intoxicating 
drinks. Many of these men, once as 
strong and hopeful and ambitious as you 
are, laughed at the squeamishness of 



70 Work and Play 

those who thought it was dangerous to 
drink light wines and beer. They glo- 
ried in their independence and their 
strength. But now their maudlin words 
and labored breath portray, as no tem- 
perance lecture can, the abject bondage 
of him who is a slave to appetite. Let 
every student remember the beautiful 
words of Tennyson : 

" Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; — 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power/' 

2. Brain-workers need more sleep than 
other people, yet they often get less. 
Their brain goes on working after they 
have retired to rest. Grinding, like a 
mill without a grist, it only wears away 
its own substance, exhausts its own 
power. Blessed mystery of sleep ! No 
physician or biologist can explain it ; it 
is akin to creation, a divine thing. And 
yet, how men trifle with it, defraud it, 
begrudge the hours which it consumes ! 
Kant, the philosopher, had acquired, by 



Health 7 1 

practice, a dexterous mode of wrapping 
himself in the bedclothes, like a silk- 
worm in its cocoon. When thus snugly 
folded in, he would say to himself, " Can 
any man enjoy better health than I do?" 
And when he tells us that he retired 
every night with this peaceful reflection 
at the same hour and rose at precisely 
the same hour every morning for thirty 
years, we are not surprised at his robust 
health or the matchless vigor of his mind. 
Byron complained of sleeplessness, des- 
pondency and nightmare. He " wrote 
when the fit was on " by night or by day. 
He was one of those men of whom Goethe 
sneeringly says, *'they spend their days 
complaining of headache and their nights 
drinking the wine which produces it.'' 
His lamp of life went out when he was 
but thirty-six, and the world has never 
ceased to lament the loss and misuse of 
his brilliant intellectual gifts. Gladstone 
slept regularly, took systematic exercise 
and observed the conditions of good 



72 Work and Play 

health, and we find him, hale and hearty, 
returning to the premiership at eighty- 
four. 

Be jealous of the hours of sleep. Make 
your work, your amusements, your social 
life, conform to the reasonable demands 
of this beneficent visitor. Count it not 
pleasure, but dissipation and weariness, 
to spend the hours which belong to sleep 
in gayety or unseasonable work. Enjoy 
society and cultivate friendship, but 
always subject to the claims of duty and 
usefulness. 

Here are two young men working side 
by side. One sleeps early and long ; 
the other retires late and irregularly. 
You say they seem to get on equally 
well, but Kant would have told you, as 
their physician will tell you, that one of 
them is slowly exhausting his stock of 
vitality, while the other is keeping it full. 
In time, one will be bankrupt, the other 
rich, in health. "I can do nothing," 
said General Grant, " without nine hours 



Health 73 

of sleep." Horace Greeley refused to 
sit up at night sessions of Congress, ab- 
ruptly leaving when his hour for retiring 
arrived. No young man can afford to 
disregard, or cut short, the ministrations 
of 

♦« Kind nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." 

3. Another great preserver of life and 
health is exercise. Nothing destroys 
power so completely and effectually as 
disuse. Compare the arm that has been 
carried in a sling with the arm that has 
wielded the blacksmith's hammer. Com- 
pare the hard, well-rounded muscles of a 
college athlete with the puny frame of 
one who has been confined in a close 
room. But even this contrast does not 
tell the whole story. It is more than a 
hundred years since Priestly discovered 
oxygen, but there are many people who 
do not seem to have discovered it yet. 
They shut it out of their homes and al- 
most shut it out of their lungs. Oxygen 



74 Work and Play 

is life ; the gas which it liberates is death. 
The most important effect of exercise is 
to produce a vigorous flow of blood to the 
lungs. If taken, as it should be, in the 
open air, or in a large, cool room, the 
blood is rapidly oxygenated, purified 
from dangerous poisons, and life and 
strength and health are absorbed. 

Nature has provided for this bodily 
need during childhood by implanting the 
love of play. The sports in which chil- 
dren most delight are admirably adapted 
to develop and strengthen the body. 
That man is fortunate who never out- 
grows the fondness for play. But it 
must be conceded that many men do not 
thus preserve their childish impulses. 
They lose this one very young ; indeed, 
some are never so old, in this respect, as 
about the time they are college students. 
You will find, sitting side by side in every 
company of students, those who delight 
in athletic sports and those who shrink 
from vigorous exercise as they would 



Health 75 

from an ice-cold bath. They almost re- 
sent the kindly but expensive provision 
made for their welfare in playgrounds 
and gymnasiums. And to such I say, 
take your exercise whether you enjoy it 
or not. Your disinclination to it is the 
strongest proof that you need more of it. 
The reward of exertion is the ability to 
exert yourself more easily next time. 
Not long ago, a man walked down the 
principal street of an Eastern city carry- 
ing a barrel of flour under each arm. A 
few years before he had been given up to 
die of an incurable disease ; but well- 
directed exercise quickened the circula- 
tion and gave vigor to every part until he 
astonished a whole city with his feats of 
strength. 

4. Much has been said recently con- 
cerning the danger of overwork. That 
there is a danger of this kind, no one will 
deny. Men break down from overwork; 
the nerves give way from sheer exhaus- 
tion. Students undermine their health 



76 Work and Play 

from excessive study. Prudence and good 
judgment are necessary in these things. 
But so much misapprehension exists and 
the danger is thus so greatly increased, 
that we ought to estimate it as carefully 
as we can. 

We do well to remember, then, that 
mental exercise is as conducive to bodily 
health as physical exercise is to mental 
health. "A sound mind in a sound body" 
implies the vigorous activity of both. 
They are not counter claimants of a lim- 
ited stock of vitality, but rather constituent 
factors of one whole. Intellectual tone, 
cheerfulness, earnest purpose invigorate 
the body no less certainly than good 
physical conditions strengthen the mind. 
A score of people overwork their bodies 
where one overworks his mind. Com- 
pare the faces of the cash-boys and girls 
in a city store with those of the children 
in a grammar-school; compare the youth 
in high schools and colleges with the 
clerks and operatives of the same age. 



Health ']'-j 

'* Itis the factory-children, not the school- 
children, that die," said an eminent phy- 
sician, not long since. Intellectual pur- 
suits are the most healthy occupations. 
Records of life insurance show that 
brain-workers outlive mechanics and 
laborers. Make a list of a hundred of 
the most eminent men this country has 
produced and you will be delighted to 
find what a large proportion of them lived 
to a good old age. The average age of 
the fifteen presidents of the United States, 
first deceased, was seventy-five years. 
The triennial catalogues give eloquent 
testimony to the prolonged lives of col- 
lege graduates. There is no better tonic 
than success. Defeat is as demoralizing 
to the health as it is to the character. It 
is often better to make a brave eflfort and 
incur fatigue than to give up and say, '' I 
can't." Education consists in gaining the 
ability to use one's powers — to make them 
yield the largest possible service. It 
trains men to do things — not to refrain 



78 Work and Play 

from doing them. The men who are 
getting the most out of life are the broad- 
gauge men who are interested in all that 
concerns the public welfare. They were 
*' hustlers" when they were students. 
The man who draws back within his 
shell, who has no time, no strength, for 
anything but his own self-centered round, 
makes his health as precarious as his in- 
fluence is insignificant. Better to wear 
out than to rust out. Barbarians are 
short-lived ; but the clear-headed grad- 
uate of a New Hampshire college, doing 
more thinking in a month than an Esqui- 
mau in a lifetime, resists disease and 
stands like one of his native hills, calm 
and serene for almost a century. 

But some one will say : Is there, then, 
no danger of excessive study? Is por- 
ing over books twelve or fifteen hours a 
day the best tonic? Have young people 
never been injured by brain-work? 

There is, of course, the possibility of 
excess in study as in all other employ- 



Health 79 

ments. But study is not dangerous nor 
destructive of the health except in rare 
instances. In most cases of poor health, 
apparently induced by hard study, im- 
pure air, want of proper exercise, social 
diversions, or something else, is the real 
cause. It is care, trouble, worry, disap- 
pointment, jealousy and hate that crush 
out life and hope. It is the exultant 
glow of 

" Something attempted, something done," 
which renews them. 



VI 
HABIT 



<* This law is the 7)iagistraie of a 7naiCs life.'''' 

Joseph Johnson. 

' ' Habit is a cable ; we weave a thread of it every 
day, and at last we caiuiot break it.'''' 

Horace Mann. 

*' Use almost can cJiange the stamp of N'atnre.'''' 
William Shakespeare. 



VI 

HABIT 

T N the early history of periodical 
literature, Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote 
a series of allegories on familiar sub- 
jects for the Rambler. They attracted 
much attention and have been famous 
ever since. One of these allegories 
personifies education as a gentle queen 
and describes her solicitude that all 
her subjects should be free from the 
power of a tyrant named Habit. Habit 
was always lying in wait for the un- 
wary. As Education led her followers 
up the side of the mountains which 
lay in the pathway of learning, nothing 
was more noticeable than her frequent 
cautions to beware of Habit. She was 
always guarding them against this dan- 
gerous enemy and kept calling out to 
one and another, at every step, that 



84 Work and Play 

Habit was ensnaring them ; that they 
would be under the dominion of Habit be- 
fore they perceived their danger ; and that 
those whom Habit should once enslave 
had little hope of regaining their liberty. 
This has been, from Dr. Johnson's day 
to the present time, the prevalent idea of 
Habit. Rousseau, in one of his oracular 
utterances, says that the only habit 
which a child should be permitted to 
form is to contract no habits whatever. 
Habit has been represented as a devour- 
ing monster, as a poisoned atmosphere, 
paralyzing effort, as a treacherous dwarf, 
ready to develop a giant's strength at an 
unguarded moment. 

" Habit, at first, is but a silken thread, 

Fine as the light-winged gossamers that sway 
In the warm sunbeams of a summer^s day ; 
A shallow streamlet rippling o'er its bed, 
A tiny sapling ere its roots are spread. 
A yet unhardened thorn upon the spray, 
A lion's whelp that hath not scented prey, 
A little smiling child obedient led. 



Habit 85 

Beware ! that thread may bind thee as a chain, 
That streamlet gather to a fatal sea, 
That sapling spread into a gnarled tree. 
That thorn, grown hard, may wound and give thee 
pain, 
That playful whelp his murderous fangs reveal, 
That child, a giant, crush thee 'neath his heel." 

But though these figures vividly por- 
tray the insidious nature of evil habits, 
there is another side of this truth far 
more agreeable to contemplate. The 
power of an evil habit is not necessarily 
greater than that of a good habit. The 
one aids and elevates as surel}^ as the 
other degrades. Indeed, the value of 
well formed habits can scarcely be over- 
stated. Habit gives ease and certainty 
to acts which would otherwise be diffi- 
cult or misdirected. It is nature's 
method of accumulating strength and 
vastly augmenting our powers of accom- 
plishment. 

Thus a bookkeeper foots up long col- 
umns of figures with an ease and cer- 



86 Work and Play 

tainty which surprise us. He will add 
five or ten columns while we are adding 
one and not work half as hard as we do. 
A business man will run through a pile 
of a hundred letters, making a note on 
this one and a figure on that and assign 
them to different clerks to answer or 
record with wonderful rapidity and never 
make a mistake. Such men illustrate 
the value of habit. Give them some- 
thing else to do and they will show no 
such facility. 

Habit diminishes the time necessary 
for any given action. Compare the 
clumsy finger exercises of a beginner on 
the piano with the performance of a 
skilled pianist; compare the time the 
child spends over his first written words 
with the rapid writing of a college boy 
in taking notes of a lecture. As Mauds- 
ley says : " If an act became no easier 
after being done several times, no prog- 
ress could be made. The washing of 
his hands or the fastening of a button 



Habit ^j 

would be as difficult for a man as for a 
child." We may rejoice, then, that " man 
is a bundle of habits," for his habits mul- 
tiply his powers a hundredfold. 

The discipline of education consists 
largely in the formation of habits. The 
Duke of Wellington, referring to the 
familiar proverb concerning habit, ex- 
claimed : "Habit a second nature! 
Habit is ten times nature." Wellington 
was himself a fine illustration of habit 
and we can easily see how such a man, 
relying upon his trusted soldiers, might 
think so. The daily drill and the years 
of discipline completely fashion a man 
over again. 

Habits are of various kinds, physical, 
mental and moral, though many habits 
involve both mental and moral activities. 
Examples of bodily habits are peculiari- 
ties of gait or gesture, or skill in using 
some tool, as a saw or hammer, or an 
engraver's chisel. A child accidentally 
or by imitation falls into some peculiarity 



88 Vv^ork and x^lay 

of speech and soon finds it fastened upon 
him as a fixed habit, difficult or impossi- 
ble to overcome. Or he may fail at the 
proper age to acquire the distinct articu- 
lation of certain sounds — that is, to get 
his vocal apparatus to do its full work — 
and so he will always lisp, or have some 
other peculiarity of speech. In the same 
way people form their own individual 
handwriting, almost as characteristic as 
their faces, the result of habit. 

Manners are habits. A courteous 
bearing is not merely the expression of 
the man for the moment ; it is the record 
of his attitude of mind for years. If he 
would enter a room or say good-morn- 
ing gracefully, he must do it uncon- 
sciously. We cannot do anything well 
till we can do it without thinking. Thus 
a boy does not really know how to swim 
till he can swim. Complete knowledge 
in many such things implies an estab- 
lished habit. Our education and experi- 
ence ought to train us to make as many 



Habit 89 

useful actions as possible habitual and 
automatic. The details of our daily life 
usually follow a routine. People some- 
times regret this, but we are fortunate 
that it is so. Why should we waste our 
energies in deciding the same questions 
everyday? The good old maxim, "a 
time and a place for everything " is the 
crystallization of a hundred good habits. 
Who is more miserable than one in 
whom nothing is habitual but inde- 
cision? 

In one of Professor Huxley's books 
the story is told of a discharged soldier 
who was so accustomed to the military 
drill that he would always suit the action 
to the word of command. One day, a 
wag who saw him carrying home his 
dinner called out "Attention ! " Where- 
upon the soldier instantly brought his 
hands down and dropped his mutton and 
potatoes in the gutter ! When a pupil 
begins to play the violin, a book is often 
placed under his right armpit which he 



90 Work and Play 

is to hold fast by keeping the upper arm 
tight against his body. This prevents 
his swinging his elbow awkwardly as he 
pla3^s. In the same way, mechanical 
devices are employed to prevent bad 
habits or mannerisms in the young 
pianist, singer and speaker. 

Habit implies an accumulation of energy 
by repeated actions till a mental faculty or 
a bodily organ is predisposed or held — 
habihis — to act in a certain manner. The 
mind repeats its activities with a constant 
tendency to perform each process in the 
same way it has acted before and with 
a constantly increasing facility. Habit 
steadies and gives strength. It gives mo- 
mentum and finish to every act. We have 
truly learned not that which we can be 
examined upon, but that which has been 
absorbed into our habits of thought. A 
boy begins to be a gentleman by remem- 
bering to perform certain courtesies ; he 
really is one when these acts become 
so habitual that he performs them uncon- 



Habit 91 

sciously. He begins to be morally up- 
right when he tries to treat his school- 
mates and others kindly and fairly ; he 
really becomes so when the habit has 
ripened into character. 

" Sow an act and you reap a habit, 

Sow a habit and you reap a character." 

Habits are formed largely in youth ; 
they constitute one's personality. By 
the time one is twenty-five, often much 
earlier, you see the professional bearing 
and habit settling down upon him. Cer- 
tain little mannerisms indicate that he is 
a young doctor, or minister, or lawyer, 
or commercial traveler. And still earlier 
do one's habits, his looks and his man- 
ners, point him out as studious or earnest 
or superficial or fast. No one can say 
that he will do a thing only once. The 
very act of doing it — the act which was 
to be his first and his last of the kind — 
makes him weaker to resist the tempta- 
tion w^hile it increases its power. 



92 Work and Play 

In *' Sandford and Merton " the story 
is told of a young man who purchased a 
handsome memorandum book every day 
and immediately proceeded to fill it with 
good resolutions, one on a page. When- 
ever one of his resolves was broken he 
hastened to tear out the leaf on which it 
was written. All of his books which 
were more than a few days old consisted 
of empty covers ! None of his good 
purposes were maintained long enough 
to yield a habit. Too often is it thus 
with men's best intentions. They fail at 
the very outset. Professor Bain has sug- 
gested several excellent maxims for the 
benefit of those who are tr3ang to estab- 
lish a good habit, or overcome a bad 
one. 

In the first place give the desired habit 
as strong an initiative as possible. Its 
beginning should be an event worthy of 
note. No other engagements or allure- 
ments should be permitted to conflict with 
it. Give it all the momentum you can in 



Habit 93 

the outset in order that it may not break 
down before it has had time to be forti- 
fied by repetition. 

In the second place, permit no excep- 
tion until the habit is well rooted in life. 
Each inducement overcome makes the 
next conquest easier. Moral habits 
imply the presence of two hostile pow- 
ers. Never lose a battle ; for a step in 
the wrong direction costs all that has 
been gained and makes a new start more 
difficult. Every time a resolve evapo- 
orates without result is worse than a 
chance lost. 

The third maxim is that we should 
seize the first opportunity to act on every 
good resolution. Good sentiments or in- 
tentions are of no value if the will is not 
able to hold the position it has chosen in 
the various concrete cases as they arise. 
Keep the faculty of effort strong, if need 
be, by a little gratuitous exercise. What 
is needed is not emotion, but manly 
deeds. 



94 Work and Play 

Such things as smoking, drinking 
and opium-eating are sometimes spoken 
of as physical habits ; they are even 
called diseases. Of course they have 
their physiological side ; their effects are 
often very marked. But all such habits 
begin m separate actions which are free 
and voluntary. They are therefore 
moral habits. The use of the stimulant 
is entirely within the field of personal 
control ; the effects of the use are entirely 
outside this field. Men often foresee and 
regret consequences which they could 
avert if they were willing to deny them- 
selves. They crave the indulgence even 
though they know that it is wearing the 
ruts of habit deeper and deeper. In the 
formation of these habits the will does 
ver}^ little in the outset, but it surren- 
ders much. Each time the surrender 
is made the will grows weaker and the 
physical excitability becomes greater. 
At length the craving is irresistible and 
the dominion of the will over that feature 



Habit 95 

of the bodily life is abandoned. Then 
the habit may be truly called physical, 
for in that particular the person has 
ceased to be a man and has become 
an animal, or a thing. His intelligence 
draws helplessly back while his appetite 
drives him on. What could be more pit- 
iable ! *' Conceive," says Coleridge, " a 
poor, miserable wretch, who for many 
years has been attempting to beat ofT 
pain by a constant recurrence to the vice 
which reproduces it. In short, conceive 
whatever is most wretched, helpless, and 
hopeless, and you will form as tolerable 
an idea of my state as it is possible for a 
good man to have." 

If, now, it be asked what is the secret 
of the wonderful power of habit, why 
habits are so easily formed in youth, and 
why they are so persistent, I answer that 
I believe the true answer, so far as we 
can go in our explanation, has been 
found during the last few years. 

The mind uses nervous force in all 



g6 Work and Play 

its activities. Every time an act is per- 
formed this nerve-force makes, as it 
w^ere, a track for itself along which it will 
run more easily next time, and after a 
few repetitions it is difficult to make the 
nerve-force run in any other way. Now, 
in the economy of nature, the use of the 
hands in labor or athletics will no more 
surely harden the muscles and make cal- 
lous spots on the palms than it will cause 
the nervous force to run along certain 
lines and result in certain regular move- 
ments. And when one thinks the same 
thing happens ; the nerve force is wear- 
ing channels for itself — mental habits are 
forming. And if one talks, habits of 
speech are forming. If he acts, habits of 
life are forming. 

And thus the new psychology of which 
some good people have been afraid is, 
as Professor James has shown, the strong- 
est ally of sound moral instruction. Every 
right action helps to form a right habit 
which is a source of strength ; every 



Habit 97 

wrong action tends to break down a 
good habit or establish a bad one. In 
the play, Rip Van Winkle excuses him- 
self for each new drink by saying, " We 
won't count this time." So young men 
say nowadays. Well, they may not 
count it, their friends may not count it, 
kind heaven may not count it ; but it is 
being counted none the less. Down 
among the cells of the brain and along 
the lines of the nerves, the molecules 
and fibers are steadily registering and 
storing it up against the time of the next 
temptation. And how often the account 
becomes too heavy for the man to pay, 
and, try as he will, he cannot reform ! 
He has been running in debt to nature 
till he is morally insolvent. 

But, fortunately, it is not our mistakes 
and sins alone that are thus registered. 
Every right choice leaves its impress ; 
every manly decision is counted no less 
certainly. The youth who resists the 
temptation to shirk to-day makes it easier 



98 Work and Play 

to do good work to-morrow. Industry, 
integrity and self-control may become 
so habitual that temptation along these 
lines cannot move us, and even happi- 
ness and cheerfulness ma}^ become habits 
by always looking on the bright side. 
The student who keeps faithfully busy 
each day may rest assured of the final 
result. The little molecules will find 
their appropriate places in his brain as 
certainly as they will in a cr3^stal or a 
flower. Only let him persevere in whole- 
some effort and study and he will cer- 
tainly find as the years glide by that right 
mental activities have become mental 
habits, and right moral activities have 
become moral habits, and have given 
him strength to take his place among the 
strong and successful men of his genera- 
tion. 

He will have some battles to wage, 
but he will win, and it will do him good 
to \vin them. There is a fable of a Nor- 
man captain who inherited all the virtues, 



Habit 99 

— courage, sagacity, foresight, persever- 
ence, whatever they were, — of the per- 
sons slain by him in battle. Thus only 
could he grow strong. This fable be- 
comes fact in the life of every one who 
conquers an evil habit or acquires a good 
one. 

LofO. 



VII 
THE COST OF FOUNDATIONS 



•Too low they build who build beneath the stars.'''' 

Edward Young. 

' Souls ai'e built as temples are, — 
Based on truth'' s eternal law. 
Sure and steadfast, without flaw, 
Thro2igh the sutishine, througJi the snows, 
Up and on the building goes ; 
Every fair thing fluids its place. 
Every hard thing lends a grace. 
Every hand may make or mar^ 



VII 

THE COST OF FOUNDATIONS 

'T^HE cost of foundations is proverbial ; 
it is often discouraging. When a 
man who proposes to build a new house 
first looks over the plans and estimates, 
he finds that the artistic features of win- 
dows, porch and roof will add compara- 
tively little to the expense, but that the 
solid masonry, buried deep out of sight, 
is the most costly part of the building. 
In all ages deep and secure foundations 
have been sought for structures which 
were to endure. Those whose base was 
weak have long since disappeared, but 
the Pyramids and the Parthenon and 
many another ancient edifice will testify, 
for ages yet to come, to the skill and 
foresight of the men who laid their in- 
destructible foundations. 

The walls of the Board of Trade build- 



I04 Work and Play 

ing in Chicago are said to rest upon huge 
granite pillars, fifty feet long, filled 
round with great beds of concrete. Other 
towering buildings in that city have still 
stronger foundations. Seven of the twen- 
ty millions which the capitol at Albany 
has cost were expended before the first 
story was reached. Its stately roof might 
almost have been buried in the great 
excavation which was made to receive 
its sub-structure. When it was pro- 
posed to build a lighthouse on Minot's 
Ledge at the entrance of Boston harbor, 
it was found that the rock was uncovered 
only twenty minutes a day, at low tide. 
It took two years, at great cost, to shape 
the sea-worn surface to receive the tower ; 
it took five years more to lay the first 
courses and attach them securely to the 
rock. Then one year sufficed to com- 
plete the tower and place in position one 
of the most celebrated lights which flashes 
its rays along the Atlantic coast. 

The young student often stands dis- 



The Cost of Foundations 105 

heartened at the cost of an education. It 
will take so many years, he complains, 
to go through college, and then there 
are other years of preparation to follow. 
He wants to be in business or profes- 
sional life at once. In his eagerness to 
be a man among men he is tempted to 
take a'* short cut " in education. Why 
should he not enter at once upon the 
study of his profession? Why spend so 
much time upon general and disciplinary 
branches? Why are they so important? 
If he could save four years in preparing 
for his life-work what a gain it would 
be! 

Most 3^oung men have such thoughts 
as these. They are impatient of prelim- 
inaries. They are interested in whatever 
bears upon their future calling, but dis- 
posed to criticize and question studies 
and methods of work which do not im- 
mediately contribute to prepare them for 
their calling. They want to be putting 
on the roof when they should be making 



io6 Work and Play 

the foundation strong. No doubt some 
of you often have feelings of this kind, 
for it must be admitted that while the 
number of college students is increasing 
rapidly in this country, the great majority 
of young men still refuse to take time for 
a college course. 

It is well therefore for us to bear in 
mind that the conditions under which 
men work have greatly changed during 
the last few years ; other changes are 
taking place. Competition has grown 
fiercer, personal rivalries and compari- 
sons are closer ; many of the old 
methods of carrying on business or 
conducting professional practice are out 
of date and no longer possible ; con- 
certed effort has taken the place of 
indivicTual action ; skilful leadership 
and foresight have become more and 
more important. In almost every direc- 
tion, the obstacles in the way of business 
or professional success have increased. 
If you are to do as well as your fathers 



The Cost of Foundations 107 

have done, you must possess more than 
their abilities. But you need to do 
better, for standards have been raised. 
It takes more money to make a man 
rich than it used to take ; and in the • 
same way it takes more abihty to make 
him able, more learning to make him 
learned, more education to make him 
cultured. Many a man who would 
have risen to note a generation ago is 
only ordinary now and sinks out of 
sight. 

On the other hand, the possibilities 
which await the 3'Oung man of the 
highest ability and culture have greatly 
increased ; honors and emoluments have 
multiplied ; new opportunities for dis- 
tinguished service have sprung up. 
The world is in sore need of stroncr, 
useful men ; they have never been more 
loudly called for than at the present 
time. Formerly, the only opportunities 
offered to college graduates in this coun- 
try were found in the three " learned 



io8 Work and Play 

professions," the Christian ministry, law, 
or medicine : but now every department 
of science and almost every branch of 
manufactures requires its broadly trained 
scholars and experts, while the great 
business interests and enterprises de- 
mand a constantly increasing number of 
men of the highest ability and training 
to guide and direct their affairs. Not 
long ago a teacher's position, paying a 
salary of eighty-five dollars a month, 
became vacant in the state of Iowa, and 
in a short time six hundred and ten ap- 
plications were received from fifteen 
different states. But if a high position 
requiring unusual ability is to be filled, 
trustees and committees often spend 
many months searching for a suitable 
man. The crowding is all around the 
foot of the ladder ; the saying of Daniel 
Webster was never more strikingly true 
than it is to-day, that " there is plenty of 
room in the upper stories." 

The inference is therefore irresistible 



The Cost of Foundations 109 

that every aspiring young man should 
lay his foundation of liberal study broad 
and deep. It is of course each one's 
duty to make the most of himself; 
higher considerations than those which 
have been suggested might be urged, 
but it is unnecessary to dwell upon them 
here. Only let us clearly understand 
that the obstacles in the way of the weak 
and inferior have multiplied, while new 
and attractive opportunities are con- 
stantly opening before the strong and 
well equipped. " To him that hath 
shall be given." 

But the fields of study have been 
greatly extended ; colleges offer much 
more to their students than formerly ; 
no one can pursue all the courses ; 
which shall we elect? Most students 
should seek personal advice in this 
matter; we can give here only one sug- 
gestion : 

Choose broadly ; do not specialize too 
early. Give your powers time to de- 



I lo Work and Play 

velop under favorable influences. Spe- 
cial training is best when it rests upon a 
broad and strong foundation of liberal 
study. Let us note a few corner-stones : 

1. A well educated man in the comino- 
years will possess the power of concen- 
tration. He will be able to focus his 
mental energies and bring them to bear 
upon a definite point ; he will be able to 
hold them steadily to the matter in 
hand; his mental grip, while quiet and 
easy, will be firm. He will be able to 
give accurate and prolonged attention to 
the facts and phenomena presented. 
His studies will have made him familiar 
with the methods of investigation pur- 
sued in modern science ; and he will 
unconsciously employ them, as occasion 
arises, in the search for truth and the 
detection of error. 

2. His powers of retention, his mem- 
ory and imagination, will also be 
trained ; he will be able to hold and 
organize his knowledge for ready use. 



The Cost of Foundations 1 1 1 

It will not be a mass of disconnected 
facts, but rather a comprehensive ac- 
quaintance with the laws and relations 
which underlie them. He will know 
the great events of history and the 
lessons which the}^ teach. The experi- 
ences of mankind, their struggles for 
freedom, and their groping for the 
truth, then- various phases of social evo- 
lution, will have their bearing for him 
upon present day problems. He will 
be, in the best sense, a well informed 
man. 

3. His judgment will be trained. He 
will be able to discriminate clearly, 
to compare accurately and justly. His 
habit of thought will lead him constantly 
to distinguish between that which is 
essential and that which is accidental, 
between the real and the apparent, the 
true and the false, the good and the bad, 
the right and the wrong. His analysis 
of subjects will be clear and logical. 
Holding each deduction steadily in hand. 



1 1 2 Work and Play 

he will be able to apply it till his chain 
of reasoning is strong and convincing. 
The habit of foresight will be formed, 
and, blending experience with expecta- 
tion, he will wisely judge of the future 
from the past. 

4. In the coming years the well edu- 
cated man will possess the power of clear 
and easy expression. It is not enough 
to perceive, remember and think well ; 
mental processes lose their value in pro- 
portion as they fail of utterance. One's 
education is incomplete and disappoint- 
ing if it does not enable him to state his 
wishes or opinions distinctly and forcibly 
on any subject. Perhaps it is too much 
to say that he should do it equally well 
by voice or pen, but he must, at least, 
be able to join, at any time, in confer- 
ence or debate as occasion may arise. 
His weight and influence will depend 
largely on this power. Nothing is more 
central in a good education than a real 
acquaintance with one's native tongue. 



The Cost of Foundations 113 

A knowledge of a dozen languages, of 
ancient and modern history and of all 
the sciences, would not compensate one 
for ignorance of English. No man's 
education is good until he has read dis- 
criminatingly in all the great depart- 
ments of American and EngHsh litera- 
ture. 

These are some of the foundation- 
stones which every college student 
should lay. Others might well be 
added; no one will claim, I am sure, 
that we have made the requirements 
too comprehensive, or set the standard 
too high for the liberally educated man. 
Whatever may be his professional or 
business attainments, whatever intimate 
and minute familiarity he may subse- 
quently acquire with any special study 
or calling, he will need, and ought to 
possess at the outset, all the qualifica- 
tions which we have outlined. Nothing 
less will constitute him a well rounded 
and well trained man. 
9 



114 Work and Play 

As we enter upon the work of a col- 
lege year, new hopes and purposes 
spring up within us. Aspiration is 
quickened ; thoughts at once joyous and 
serious fill our minds. Let us see to it 
that these desires shall not be fleeting 
and evanescent. Whatever else the 
coming months may fail to bring, they 
need not and should not fail to strengthen 
our moral fiber — our true manliness. 

Dr. Arnold of Rugby was accustomed 
to estimate his students less by their 
intellectual attainments than by their 
personal character and stamina. He 
urged upon them " moral thoughtful- 
ness ; " their real improvement would be 
evinced by their conduct. It is natural 
for youth to act from impulse ; maturing 
years and discipline should bring reflec- 
tion, a thoughtful regard for every in- 
terest, not forgetting our own. Let 
none of us think that, because w^e are 
well and strong, we may therefore disre- 
gard the conditions of good health, or 



The Cost of Foundations 115 

that because we have talent we may 
neglect the means of intellectual growth, 
or that because we are away from home 
we may relax the principles of rectitude 
or the rules of gentlemanly intercourse. 
Nowhere do actions ripen into habits 
more rapidly than in college. Any edu- 
cation is weak and narrow which does 
not make us kind, considerate and ap- 
preciative. 

And let us not suppose that the old- 
fashioned, homespun virtue of industry 
is less needful in college than in other 
places. Nowhere is the loss of time 
more disastrous, nowhere are the temp- 
tations to waste it more frequent. Pleas- 
ant companionship, diversions, indolence 
and love of ease are all liable to en- 
croach upon the hours of work. The 
result is poor and hurried preparation of 
lessons, neglect of college and society 
exercises. And more serious than this 
loss is the habit of slipshod work which 
is thus formed and the willingness to be 



1 1 6 Work and Play 

satisfied with less than the best that 
one can do. Our future character and 
quality, our moral stamina and force of 
will depend upon the habit of doing our 
best every time. 

And to this comprehensive virtue of 
industr}^ we need to add another plain 
and unpretending but fundamental trait 
— that of earnestness. The lukewarm 
man, the student who is half awake and 
half asleep, will never accomplish any- 
thing. It is natural for youth to be enthu- 
siastic ; nothing is more becoming. And 
yet, many young people, college boys 
among them, have conceived the idea that 
it is iii bad form to be very much in ear- 
nest about any thing. ** Harvard indif- 
ference," as the Nation called it, was al- 
most a fad in many colleges a few years 
ago. It has not disappeared from some 
of them yet ; but it is going. There 
is no room in any college for a Nil 
Adinirari society. It you have strong 
muscles and a bounding pulse, act as if 



The Cost of Foundations 117 

you had them. Why should a young 
man belie his abounding vitality? Why 
affect a supercilious unconcern, or en- 
gage with sluggish indifference in those 
things which should elicit earnest pur- 
pose and enthusiasm? Why live in 
intellectual hovels when we might live 
in palaces? 

The preparation for college is cen- 
tered upon the scholastic requirements 
for admission ; the requisites in those 
things which pertain to character are too 
often overlooked. The higher insdtu- 
tion must supplement, as it can, the 
work of the preparatory years. Great 
temptations beset a college boy in the 
comparative freedom of his student life. 
If he has been sheltered from evil influ- 
ences at home, or if he has not learned 
to resist them, can he stand against them 
now? Sooner or later he must meet 
them. Is he equal to the responsibility 
of self-direction? Some evening when 
he is with a lot of friends, can he raise 



1 1 8 Work and Play 

his protest if something is proposed 
which he knows to be wrong? And if 
he is unable to stop it, can he separate 
himself and go to his room w^hile his 
friends enjoy themselves? Can he com- 
pel his reluctant energies and faithfully 
perform his work when temptations to 
shirk it press upon him? Can he turn 
away from the allurements of vice when 
he sees no danger of discovery or dis- 
grace? Are his habits and integrity 
guarded by firm principles? For most 
of us there need be no doubt concerning 
these things ; if some are weak let those 
who are strong throw about them a 
manly protection and care. 

Such are the foundations upon which 
we need to build. They cost much in 
self-denial, in modest thoughtfulness, in 
patient and earnest work. But they 
enable us to build a comely and endur- 
ing structure. Upon them our lives 
may rise in symmetry and stand un- 
shaken by time or tempest. They af- 



The Cost of Foundations 119 

ford ample compensation for every sac- 
rifice in the consciousness of purity, 
integrity and uprightness. And they 
give us faith in ourselves and faith in 
the future that we shall realize its inspir- 
ing possibilities. 



VIII 
UNCONSCIOUS EDUCATION 



^'■Love is ever the beginning of knowledge, as fire 

is of light.'''' 

Thomas Carlyle. 

' '■A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of 

mankind ; a?id every human being whose nmid is 

not debased, will be willing to give all that he has to 

get knowledge P 

Samuel Johnson. 

* ' Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of the 
gentleman — repose in energy. '''' 

R. W. Emerson. 



VIII 
UNCONSCIOUS EDUCATION 



W 



E all understand that education is a 
growth, a development. The mind 
is not a storehouse to be filled or a ma- 
chine to be set in motion ; it is a spiritual 
principle, putting forth its own energies 
and working out its own ends. 

We also understand that in its pro- 
cesses of growth the mind is constantly- 
influenced by the things towards which 
its activity is directed. We grow to be 
like the things which we think most 
about. He who habitually thinks of low 
or selfish things will be himself debased, 
while the mind which is filled with noble 
conceptions tends to become strong and 
pure. One's likes and dislikes are usu- 
ally reflected in his habits of thought. 

I wish this morning to think with you 
for a few minutes along the line of the 



124 Work and Play 

indirect or unconscious education we are 
constantly receiving. We recognize, of 
course, the value of the discipline gained 
in the recitation-room and laboratory. 
The intellectual powers are trained and 
developed by study and drill. The col- 
lege work stands first ; it is the soil into 
which our mental growth strikes its roots. 
But I remember that the experiment was 
once tried in the royal botanical gardens 
at Kew of planting a tree in a large box 
in which it grew rapidly for some years. 
It was then transplanted and, while the 
tree had gained hundreds of pounds in 
weight, the box of earth weighed nearly 
as much as when the tree was first set 
in it. 

The mind, like the tree, derives the 
materials of its growth largely from the 
atmosphere which surrounds it, and 
while, like the tree, it grows best in a 
good soil, it also requires certain other 
favorable conditions of air and warmth 
and sunshine. We will look for a mo- 



Unconscious Education 125 

ment at some of these unconscious influ- 
ences of growth which are of special 
importance during our college days. 
The first of these is our environment. 

Buckle has pointed out in his great 
work on the Intellectual Development 
of Europe that the type of civilization 
developed by the people of each country 
is largely due to their natural surround- 
ings. Thus we find in the Swiss moun- 
taineer, the Scotch highlander, the Yar- 
mouth fisherman, and the Hollander 
guarding his dykes and canals, marked 
characteristics and differences due to 
their locality and the life which they 
lead. Most persons are deeply influ- 
enced by the home in which their child- 
hood is passed. Some 3^ears ago Wash- 
ington Gladden wrote to several hundred 
of the most successful men of his city 
asking them certain questions concern- 
ing their early life and habits of work. 
The replies showed that the boyhood of 
over ninety per cent, of these men was 



126 Work and Play 

passed in the country, generally on a 
farm, and that they learned to work with 
their hands. They knew the value of 
money, and early acquired habits of 
thrift and industry. Many of them 
gained a college education under great 
difficulties. Now it does not follow 
because Daniel Webster could mow, or 
because Nathaniel P. Banks was a 
bobbin boy, that every student who has 
had like experiences will be a great 
man ; but it is true that the youth who 
has learned to apply himself, who is 
willing to " shovel," has a great advan- 
tage in the struggles of life. John M. 
Palmer, a man whom the people of Illi- 
nois have so long delighted to honor, 
mixed mortar and carried the hod to 
pay his expenses while he was attend- 
ing school. Who can estimate how 
much of the strength and lofty purpose 
which have always characterized Sena- 
tor Palmer, which characterized Abra- 
ham Lincoln and Richard Yates, and 



Unconscious Education 127 

which have been evinced by most of 
the makers of the Great West, was due 
to their early environment, in which they 
learned industry, economy and self- 
reliance? 

But, besides these great foundation 
habits which are laid in 'our early asso- 
ciations, there are influences more subtle 
and pervasive which help to form our 
judgments and often our convictions and 
ruling ideas. A fine college campus is 
a perpetual teacher. Beautiful build- 
ings and their historic associations, great 
names and the deeds or places connected 
with them, and even the anniversaries 
which commemorate the birth of a nation 
or a hero stimulate our ambition and 
make it easier to do our best. 

Art and music and pleasant surround- 
ings improve our intellectual life. Re- 
fined tastes and courteous manners are 
silently absorbed ; rough habits steal up- 
on us unawares. If any of us suppose 
we can, without harm, permit our rooms 



128 Work and Play 

to become repulsive with dirt and dis- 
order, it is a serious mistake. Carlyle 
says that he who lives like an animal 
becomes an animal. An atmosphere of 
refinement and courtesy is as necessary 
for intellectual and moral health as pure 
air is for our bodies. " He who drinks 
beer," says Emerson, " will talk beer." 
He who absorbs from his daily surround- 
ings — from the very atmosphere he 
breathes — an interest in science and lit- 
erature and scholarly themes is gaining 
an intellectual uplift which may deter- 
mine his career. Dr. Thomas Hill, for 
many years president of Harvard col- 
lege, used to say that if a man only 
rubbed his shoulders acjainst the colleo^e 
walls he would in four years receive no 
small part of a liberal education. Who 
can measure the influence exerted by 
the college literary societies, by college 
athletics, by the dormitor}^ life? It 
seems but a little thing to attend our 
daily chapel service, but the graduates 



Unconscious Education 129 

of many a college will testify that this 
recognition throughout the college course 
of their dependence upon the heavenly 
Father's care has had a beniorn and 
abiding influence upon their lives. 

Companionship plays an important 
part in our education. The keenest ob- 
server of men and things that ever lived 
once said : "He that walketh with wise 
men shall be wise : but a companion of 
fools shall be destroyed," or, more lit- 
erally, " go to pieces ;" and the shrewd 
old Yankees used to say: "A man is 
known by the compan}' he keeps." The 
influence of our daily intercourse can 
hardly be overestimated. There are 
few characters so strong that they may 
not go to pieces under the disintegrating 
influence of evil associates. It v^^as not 
the brilliant society of Edinburgh but 
the smuggler boys of Kirkoswald that 
led Burns astray. 

The social atmosphere and customs 
amidst which we live have a silent but 
10 



130 Work and Play 

powerful influence upon our character 
and habits of thought. A young man 
once entered Oberlin College who was 
addicted to profanit}^ This vice was 
frowned upon in the college circles, and 
he soon gave it up. But returning at va- 
cation to his old associations he resumed 
the habit. When he went back to col- 
lege he stopped swearing, but in his 
vacation he always relapsed into pro- 
fanity. Many another young man is 
almost as fickle and characterless. Un- 
stable and chameleon-hued, he changes 
to suit the crowd he chances to be with. 
Every student should be sure of his 
backbone. What a pity that a popular 
maxim should advise us " when in 
Rome to do as the Romans do," as if we 
were to have no mind or principles of 
our own. The companionship which 
students have with one another in Chris- 
tian colleges is generally wholesome and 
invigorating, far better than they have 
out of college. But in most schools. 



Unconscious Education 131 

cases may be found of that which 
abounds in every city and village 
throughout the land — the degradation 
of character by personal influence. The 
wise young man will therefore determine 
never to associate familiarly with those 
whose habits are bad or whose influ- 
ence will draw^ him down. 

But in college as in the outside world 
we are thrown together in various rela- 
tions. We must discharge these rela- 
tions. We cannot get rid of them if we 
would. We must meet various sorts of 
people and have constant relations with 
them. It is a grand thing to fulfil all 
the obligations which spring from our 
associations in the school, in business, 
in society. That life is exceedingly 
narrow and sheltered which does not 
come in contact with some corrupting 
influences. Well-rounded manhood im- 
plies strength and judgment safely to 
meet all sorts of men. Our associations 
are not wholly of our own choosing. 



132 Work and Play 

They are largely the outgrowth of our 
occupation and place of residence. That 
youth is fortunate who is never thrown 
into corrupting associations ; he is more 
fortunate whose quick perception and 
firm principles prove a panoply of de- 
fense against every evil allurement. 

But while our associations are thus 
largely the result of circumstances, our 
friendships are peculiarly our own. No 
one need ever continue, or even form, 
an unworthy friendship. It is true that 
casual association leads to companion- 
ship, and companionship often ripens 
into friendship ; but what communion 
hath light with darkness, or what fel- 
lowship have truth and purity vv'ith 
falsehood and uncleanness? Prize your 
friends ; bring yourst-lf into closest sym- 
pathy with them ; enjoy them ; be ready 
to serve them, to make sacrifices for 
them ; but be sure, first of all, that they 
are worthy to enter into your life, and 
never give your confidence and aflec- 



Unconscious Education 133 

tion to one whose influence will drag 
you down. 

" The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel ; 
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
Of each new-hvatched, unfledged comrade." 

And now to this warnlno; it is but fair 
to add the assurance that well assorted 
friendships contribute no less to our 
improvement than to our enjoyment. 
Bacon declares that a friend is another 
self, and a still higher authority says 
that as iron sharpens iron, so a man 
bricrhtens the countenance of his friend. 
Much of our success as well as our 
pleasure depends on our friends. In- 
deed, they are a necessity; we cannot 
get along without them. '^Untis homo^ 
niillus homo " is an old Latin proverb 
which concisely expresses the truth that 
one man alone is no man at all. He 
who tries to live without friends narrows 
his life and dwarfs his powers. Form 
no unworthy friendships, but do not 



134 Work and Play 

become hermits. Let your powers of 
mind and heart expand under genial 
intercourse with those whom you can 
respect and love. 

One practical suggestion : There is 
no place where politeness is of more 
value than where it seems superfluous. 
Respect your friend's ideas and prefer- 
ences. Don't think you must be con- 
stantly setting him right or giving him 
advice. Some people seem to think 
they can say to their friends, face to 
face, such things as they say about 
strangers behind their backs. Don't 
have stock subjects of dispute which you 
are always liable to stumble upon. Cul- 
tivate the amenities even with your 
most intimate friends. 

A third source of unconscious educa- 
tion is to be found in our aims and 
ideals. These are the motives by which 
we are actuated. To a large extent 
they have already made us what we are. 
All good work, all high endeavors, are 



Unconscious Education 135 

born of aspiration. *' Hope tells a flat- 
tering tale.'" Fancies light as air, 
springing from incidents which the 
world deemed trivial, have been cher- 
ished in the heart of a boy till they 
have made him great. Thought makes 
character. As a man " thinketh in his 
heart, so is he." He who does not 
think high things, whose imagination 
does not revel in glowing pictures of 
what he hopes to be and to do, will not 
achieve high things. Every youth has 
his day-dreams, his half-formed ideals. 
We cannot guard too closely this foun- 
tainhead of our aspirations. Thought 
quickly passes over into action. The 
ideal becomes the real. The germs of a 
pestilence in the body are not more active 
to destroy the health than false ideals are 
to corrupt the character. They poison 
the very springs of action, making of 
one a spendthrift or a libertine ; of 
another, a quack or a miser. 

Henry Schliemann, while still an er- 



136 Work and Play 

rand-boy, resolved that he would one 
day unbury Troy. His bold purpose 
and the wide renown which it afterwards 
brought him were born of his boyish 
dreams. He would never have found 
Troy, he tells us, had it not been for the 
inspiration he caught while reading 
Homer. 

Robert Fulton, a young miniature- 
painter of seventeen, conceived the bold 
fancy that a ship might be propelled 
through the water by steam. Still prac- 
tising his art as a livelihood he went to 
London to study mechanics and to Paris 
to test his inventions. He endured un- 
told hardship and ridicule, and at length, 
after more than twenty years of study 
and experiment, he was triumphantly 
carried on his little ''Clermont" from 
New York to Albany. 

The youth who is strong enough to 
drive out all unworthy aims, who will 
make room for no ideals but those that 
are high and pure, is training himself 



Unconscious Education 137 

towards a noble manhood and enduring 
success. He may never reach his ideal, 
for that will advance with his progress ; 
but, like hope, it will beckon him on and 
nerve him for still higrher achievement. 

«' Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave the low vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
sea!" 



IX 

RESERVE POWER 



^ '■There is nothing so becomes a man as modest 
stillness.'''' 

William Shakespeare. 

" Gentleness is power.'''' 

Leigh Hunt. 

' ' The world is God's seed-bed. He has planted 
deep and inultitudinonsly , a?td jnany things there 
are which have ?wt yet co7?ie ?//.'" 

H. W. Beecher. 



IX 

RESERVE POWER 

OOME men are able to find valuable 
suggestions in events which to others 
seem trivial. General Garfield once said : 
** When I was a freshman in college I 
looked out of my window before retiring 
one night and saw a light twinkling in 
the room of my principal competitor for 
the prize in mathematics. It gave me a 
hint which I was not slow to take, and I 
then and there determined to invest a lit- 
tle more preparation in the contest for 
the prize. I smile now as I recall the 
rivalry of those days, and the resolution 
to do a little more work which gained 
the much coveted prize, but I rejoice in 
the great truth which I then discovered, 
and which applies in business, in politics, 
in morals, in every relation in life, that a 
margin of unused resources is the best 
guarantee of integrity and success." 



142 Work and Play 

If every student could learn the lesson 
which Garfield learned in his student 
days, it would be greatly to his advan- 
tage. Not that he might be taught how 
to beat his competitor and take a prize ; 
not merely that he might learn the value 
of thoroughness and continue to work 
until his lessons were learned, but rather 
that he might know that real strength 
consists largely in energy which is not 
used, that power held in reserve is often 
more effective than that which is applied 
and multiplies one's working-capacity 
many fold. 

This is a principle of far-reaching im- 
port, but one which men are very slow 
to learn — a paradox, constantly illus- 
trated in our daily life. People ignore 
it, or perhaps deny it, as they do the 
sayings of the Bible that " unto every one 
that hath shall be given" and "there 
is that scattereth, and yet increaseth," 
but they go right on making life's suc- 
cesses large or small in the same propor- 



Reserve Power 143 

tion that they conform to this law. No 
one can escape it or set it aside ; the 
wise and fortunate man is he who adapts 
his life to it most completely. 

Nature teaches this truth on every 
side. The swinging of the tides would 
carry all the machinery of the world 
could it be utilized. A lump of earth 
or a drop of water holds imprisoned 
within itself latent forces which would 
lift mountains were they called into 
use. The sun gives out heat enough 
every hour to consume all the planets of 
the solar system. Even when the en- 
ergy is exerted and applied, it is the 
gentle and unnoticed forces which pro- 
duce the ixreatest effects. The boisterous 
winds sought in vain, in the fable, to rob 
the traveler of his cloak, but the genial 
sunshine soon made him cast it aside. 
The silent forces of vegetable growth 
lift from the soil or condense from the 
air the wonderful materials which cover 
the earth with verdure, fruits and for- 



144 Work and Play 

ests, while other unseen forces gather 
from the land and sea the particles of 
water which refresh the fields and fill 
the lakes and rivers. 

In mechanics, the first condition of 
good work is ample power. A Corliss 
engine, capable of driving the machinery 
of a whole exposition, will cut tlie 
smallest screw or the finest watch- 
spring. The locomotive of a generation 
acfo worked with a full head of steam as 
it jerked and jolted a few cars slowly 
along ; but its modern successor, sweep- 
ing with its heavy train three times as 
fast across the continent, uses but half 
its power. The ''ocean greyhounds" 
never run at their full speed, but the 
''tramp" steamer drives its engines to 
their utmost capacity during every hour 
of its tedious voyage. 

Still more conspicuous is this law in 
human aff'airs — in the great crises and 
emergencies of life. It is the general 
who knows that he is well supported who 



Reserve Power 145 

can lead a resistless charge. It was the 
arrival of Blucher's reserves which won 
the field of Waterloo. It was the 
United States soldiers who enabled the 
New York police to suppress the draft- 
riots without striking a blow. At the 
Battle of Gettysburg, when that last ter- 
rific charge of the Confederate forces 
seemed about to break through Han- 
cock's lines, it was the brilliant dash of 
the Vermont reserves which lent new 
courage to the Union ranks and turned 
the tide of battle. 

When danger threatens, w^hen prudent 
counsels are needed, people eagerly turn 
to the man whose wisdom and streniith 
are most trusted. It is related by Emer- 
son that, whenever Lord Chatham spoke, 
those who listened felt that there was 
something finer in the man than anything 
which he said, and additional weight 
was thereb}^ given to every sentence 
\vhich he uttered. History abounds in 
records of men whose deeds bear no ade- 
ji 



146 Work and Play 

quate proportion to the esteem in which 
they were heWby their contemporaries. 
Measured by abilit}^ displayed, intellect- 
ual or military achievements, America 
has had many greater men than Wash- 
ington ; but no one has ever yet arisen 
to dispute with him the foremost place 
in the nation's veneration and honor. 
Every community contains persons 
whose mere approval or dissent carries 
more influence than the ablest arguments 
of other less trusted advocates. The 
power of such men is, in a sense, latent; 
it is not consciously displayed and as- 
serted ; it makes itself felt without effort 
and often by unseen means. It has been 
said that '*the measure of power is the 
resistance of circumstance," but it is the 
felicity of reserve power to create cir- 
cumstances, or so to shape them that the 
crisis never comes and the battle is won 
before it is visibly joined. Men recog- 
nize their safe leader ; they find in him 
a power which they cannot, perhaps, 



Reserve Power 147 

analyze but which they gladly acknowl- 
edge. His presence inspires confidence 
and his words are like a tonic. 

We have all seen the quiet poise, the 
modest self-assertion, of such men. In 
many things, we would be glad to take 
them for our models. We ask, What is 
this intangible, indefinable quality which 
men call reserve power? What is its 
secret? Can it be cultivated ? He would 
be bold who asserted that every man's 
power can be clearly explained. Too 
many factors contribute to it, some of 
which are diflicult to trace. But it is 
easy to point out certain fundamental ele- 
ments of personal power, native gifts 
and also fruits of training, open in vary- 
ing degree to every one, which become 
an unfailing aid and reinforcement to 
their possessor. 

I. A settled purpose contributes vastly 
to one's strength. It is a propelling force. 
A weak and vacillating will brings not 
only failure, but also the habit and ex- 



148 Work and Play 

pectation of failure. It is the man who 
is dead in earnest that succeeds ; if baf- 
fled or obstructed in one direction, he 
tries another ; he sticks to his point till 
he carries it. Because he knows no 
such word as fail, because he habitually 
attains his end, he grows strong and irre- 
sistible. " Unto everyone that hath shall 
be given." 

It is a trite saying, but as true and as 
important as it is trite, that there can be 
no mastery over others until one has 
learned to govern himself. It is the 
man who holds his faculties in steady 
control in the ordinary affairs of life 
that accumulates a reserve, a force of 
will, to meet its crises. A quiet spirit 
and a quiet manner are great elements 
of strength. Excited or unruly souls 
yield to the spell of calm composure. 
Repose is not stagnation or inaction ; it 
is the serene mastery of one's self with 
an assurance which masters others. 

''The shallow murmur, but the deep 



Reserve Power 149 

are dumb," says Sir Walter Raleigh. 
The man who first declares his opinion 
when great issues arise seldom gains our 
confidence, while he who calmly waits 
till others have spoken and thoughtfully 
weighs every consideration commands 
our willing assent. Silence is sometimes 
more convincing than argument. A set- 
tled purpose, moreover, yields a steady 
progress. A spurt at the start may be 
good — there are times when it is indis- 
pensable — but it is usually the " unrest- 
ing, unhasting advance " that wins the 
day. We must have a quiet spirit if we 
would get the best out of ourselves. He 
who gains the mastery over a strong im- 
pulse, a quick temper, a sharp tongue, a 
roving imagination, little by little acquires 
an energy on which he can draw in time 
of need. Every such act of self-control 
is like a deposit in a savings-bank. 
Nature puts it out at interest and holds 
the accumulating fund. She makes him 
rich in will-power, in mental poise, — a 



150 Work and Play 

reserve of energy for himself and a guar- 
antee to the world of fitness for her ser- 
vice and honors. 

2. Simplicity augments one's strength. 
Men want the truth ; they want no re- 
servations or double-dealing. It is the 
man whose transparent course leaves no 
room for doubt that gains their confi- 
dence. People admire brilliancy, ap- 
plaud it, honor it, for a time ; but they 
tie to genuineness. They want reliabil- 
ity ; they trust their interests to the man 
who is straightforward. Temptations 
to conceal or evade are constantly pre- 
sented. Duplicity is the recourse of 
weak men ; it takes strength and charac- 
ter to resist the inducements to assume 
false colors. But the man who has the 
courapfe of his convictions and unflinch- 
ingly stands by them is not only safer 
than the trickster, but is also gaining 
strength which will support him in every 
emergency. There is no higher great- 
ness than the greatness of simplicity. 



Reserve Power 1 5 i 

3. Ample intellectual resources afford 
a constant reserve. Ignorance is always 
at a disadvantage. Most of the prob- 
lems which men meet are simplified and 
made easy by fuller information, by 
acquaintance with related subjects. It 
is marvelous how almost ever}" item of 
knowledge sooner or later becomes 
directly serviceable ; and how, if not 
immediately used, it contributes indirect- 
ly to help one in his work. A New 
York capitalist recently said that his col- 
lege education had been of constant ser- 
vice to him in meeting men, by enabling 
him to feel that he was their intellectual 
peer and at no disadvantage in point 
of culture or discipline. He thus had 
confidence in taking steps or making 
decisions where he would otherwise have 
been in doubt. 

There can be no question that people 
have greater confidence in a leader and 
hold him in higher esteem if they are 
sure of his mental equipment. Thorough 



152 Work and Play 

training, then, broad culture and infor- 
mation, are a constant reserve which 
give a man power in every department 
of service. 

4. Executive ability constitutes an im- 
portant element. It is interesting to 
observe the differences among men in 
this regard. Some work with great 
rapidity and for many hours at a time ; 
their powers of accomplishment are won- 
derful. Others can do but little ; the 
limit of their working capacity is quickl}^ 
reached. There are few important posi- 
tions which do not at times call for 
ability to do a large amount of work in 
a short time. Such conditions are not 
favorable to good work. But speed is in- 
dispensable ; there is no time for reflection 
or delay ; the opportunity will soon be 
past ; the best possible use must be made 
at once of the time afforded. An editor, 
for example, finds it necessary to write 
on an important matter just before the 
paper goes to press ; a lawyer has to 



4 



Reserve Power 153 

make a brief, or prepare to try a case, on 
very short notice ; a preacher or a 
statesman must speak on an important 
occasion with little time for preparation ; 
an author must furnish an unusual 
amount of copy within a limited period ; 
an officer in a great corporation is unex- 
pectedly called on for a statement or 
estimate covering large amounts. In 
these and multitudes of other cases a 
man's opportunity comes and is quickly 
gone ; and his value depends upon his 
capacity for rapid work, for prolonged 
effort. If this has been tested and 
proven it becomes to him a reserve 
power, enhancing the esteem in which 
he will be held. 

One's college da3's ought, at least, to 
lay the foundation of this power. No 
one believes in cramming; hurried and 
superficial preparation of a lesson is only 
to be condemned. But the ability to 
work rapidly, to prepare a lesson thor- 
oughly in a short time, is one of the 



154 Work and Play 

most desirable results of a college train- 
ing. It ought to be attained as early as 
possible in one's .student life. It stands 
in sharp contrast with the easy-going 
procrastination which creeps upon too 
many of us unawares. 

5. It would be a serious omission 
should I fail to add that an intelligent 
and unwavering faith is an important 
element in one's reserve power. Faith 
in one's self, in one's faculties and 
powers and their ability to respond to 
the demands which will be made upon 
them, is right and necessary. It is not 
o'erweening confidence or conceit, but 
a calm assurance of one's strength. It 
is simply trusting one's intellectual 
powers and relying upon them for their 
necessary service, just as one trusts his 
eyes or his ears and knows that they will 
do their proper work. Faith in others is 
also right. Not that we are to put our- 
selves in the power of strangers, or 
neglect proper precautions ; but simply 



Reserve Power 155 

that we need to trust the men with whom 
we work and that mutual confidence and 
interdependence are necessary and pro- 
mote our peace and efficiency. Faith in 
truth, faith in righteousness, faith in 
a higher Power whicli makes for right- 
eousness, faith in a heavenly Father, 
who loves and cares for his children and 
who will not desert them in their times 
of stress and difficulty, contributes, as 
nothing else can, to one's reserve 
strength. It was this faith which gave 
calm assurance and irresistible vigor to 
Cromwell and his Ironsides, to Luther 
as he nailed his theses to the church 
door in Wittenberg, to Savonarola, to 
John Knox and to every champion of 
justice and freedom. There is nothing 
higher or nobler in one's education than 
to learn the power of a living faith. It 
is like awaking to one's possibilities 
and resources. It enables a man to 
make the most of himself and of his life, 
to inspire confidence and bring out the 



156 Work and Play 

best in his fellow men, and it enables 
him to stand in hours of struggle or of 
darkness, with, his hand firmly grasping 
unseen strength and to hear a voice 
assuring him of divine guidance and sup- 
port. 



X 
THE SCHOLAR IN PUBLIC LIFE 



" States?na7i, yet friend of tnUJi ! of soul sincere. 
In action faithful a7id in ho7ior clear ; 
EjtJiobled by hijnself, by all approved. 
And praised, unenvied, by the muse he loved ^ 

Alexander Pope. 



X 

THE SCHOLAR IN PUBLIC LIFE 

'T^HE death of Gladstone (which is re- 
ported in this morning's papers) 
suggests some practical thoughts upon 
which it cannot be unprofitable for us to 
dwell for a few moments. His charac- 
ter is so exalted and his career so illus- 
trious that comment and eulogy seem 
superfluous and out of place. His deeds 
need no explanations or defence ; it is 
unnecessary even to recount them. His 
splendid attainments and personal worth 
scarcely admit of commendation or re- 
view. We instinctively feel that analy- 
sis of character and motives would be- 
little and obscure a statesmanship which 
has long stood forth so grand and clear 
as to be recognized and honored all over 
the world. 

But his life affords some very practi- 



i6o Work and Play 

cal lessons of preat value to us as stu- 
dents and young men. Whatever other 
traits college boys may have, they are 
pretty sure to love a hero. They admire 
a great man and are thrilled by his 
achievements. It is not easy to be great 
even in college days, and the enthusiasm 
of students flows spontaneously for the 
man who has won distinction. You do 
well, 3^oung gentlemen, to study a great 
life and to catch the inspiration which it 
affords. Though the contemplation may 
not make you great, it will surely help 
as well as please you. From studying 
eminent men, one may gain an impulse 
to make his own life sublime. 

We have time this morning to note but 
two of the valuable lessons which the 
life of Gladstone suggests ; I wish it 
were possible for us to give even these 
two the careful consideration which they 
deserve. 

And, first, the career of Gladstone 
teaches us the value of a long life. 



The Scholar In PubHc Life i6i 

His eighty-nine years nearly span the 
century. When he was born, Napoleon 
had just effected his divorce from Jose- 
phine, and Waterloo was six years in 
the future. Scott had just published 
*'Marmion;" Macaulay was a boy of 
nine. Disraeli, his rival in politics, 
over whom, three quarters of a century 
later, he was to pronounce so beautiful a 
funeral oration, was four years old. 
The world had yet to wait another de- 
cade before it could record the births of 
Dickens and Thackeray, Tyndall and 
Huxley, Helmholtz and Pasteur and all 
the rest of that galaxy of scientists and 
thinkers who have made this century so 
remarkable in the annals of scientific 
discovery and popular progress. Glad- 
stone himself declared, a dozen vears 
ago, that the increase of wealth during 
the present century exceeds the accu- 
mulations of all the centuries which have 
preceded it, and that the inventions and 
scientific discoveries of the nineteenth 

12 



1 62 Work and Play 

century surpass in number and impor- 
tance those of all the previous ages. 
What a privilege to have lived so long 
and to have had so large a part in such 
progress ! 

The v^orld has many maxims which 
admonish us to '' live while we do live," 
to ** seize the present" and leave the 
future to take care of itself. Excellent 
people sometimes resolve to do certain 
work or live in certain ways even if it 
should shorten their lives, but no one 
ever yet accomplished more work or got 
more out of life in the long run by disre- 
garding the conditions of health, while 
many have sacrificed their future enjoy- 
ment and efficiency and even their lives 
by mistaken conditions of work or by 
neglect of the simplest precautions. 
And so it is gratifying to learn that Glad- 
stone laid the foundation for his many 
years of earnest work in his youth ; that 
he expected to live to a good old age 
and deliberately planned for it ; that 



The Scholar in PubHc Life 163 

from his early manhood to his latest 
years he rejoiced in the strength which 
could swing a scythe or fell a tree, and 
cultivated it. His example as well as 
his words commend physical culture. 
The ideal student of a generation ago, 
with his flabby muscles and pale cheeks, 
has given place to the hard-fisted fellow 
who can play center rush on the football 
team, while the average college man of 
to-day can do and does far more intel- 
lectual work than his old-time predeces- 
sor. His eyes and brain work fewer 
hours, but they accomplish more. We 
have learned to recognize the value of 
blood and breath — the necessity of a 
sound physical basis. But the tempta- 
tion is still presented to many students to 
neglect needful exercise, to abandon the 
sports and amusements essential to the 
best mental tone. It is fortunate that 
such students should be reminded of 
these things by the example of so illus- 
trious an intellectual worker as Glad- 



164 Work and Play 

stone, a man whom no one has ever ac- 
cused of mental unproductiveness or mis- 
use of time. 

His life illustrates the fact that intel- 
lectual pursuits are conducive to health. 
He was never weighted by physical in- 
firmity. He believed that change of 
work is the best rest for a scholar. He 
had in his library three tables, at one of 
which he studied the problems of poli- 
tics, at another, the problems of litera- 
ture, and at a third, the problems of 
religion. He accumulated a library of 
twenty-five thousand volumes which 
were filled with the notes, references 
and impressions of the reader. His days 
of recreation and leisure were largely 
devoted to profound study of classical 
authors. Biblical interpretation and his- 
torical research. But, in all his enthusi- 
asm for study, he never forgot proper 
physical limitations or enfeebled his body 
by neglect of sleep or exercise. 

If any of you have a theory, as young 



The Scholar in Public Life 165 

men sometimes have, that the factor of 
time may be disregarded, do not cherish 
it. A man's work is cumulative ; each 
noble deed illustrates and adorns those 
which have preceded it. Gladstone has 
been a great man, a famous man, for 
more than half a century ; but how dif- 
ferent would have been his place in his- 
tory if he had burned life's candle at 
both ends and died, like Byron or Shel- 
ley or Poe, in the prime of his manhood ! 
What an inspiration to think of him as 
living on, adding decade to decade, wit- 
nessing the changes and the progress of 
the passing years which he had done so 
much to promote, and girding himself 
again and again to meet the new issues 
of public and private life as they arose ! 
The memorable campaign for home 
rule in Ireland was conducted by Glad- 
stone when he was seventy-seven. He 
bore his defeat as calmly as if it had 
been a victory, began at once the culti- 
vation of public sentiment in favor of 



1 66 Work and Play 

needed reforms, and at eighty-four re- 
turned to the premiership to resume the 
struggle and carry it to a practically 
victorious issue. 

Some of you have heard our honored 
associate, who sits upon this platform, 
talk about the art of longevity — an art 
which he most beautifully illustrates in 
his own person — and have been enabled 
to realize how much an added score or 
two of years mean. Think what they 
mean to the man himself whose ripened 
powers enjoy the best which life's oppor- 
tunities afford ; think how much they 
mean to his family and friends and how 
much they mean to the community in 
which he lives. How fine is the honor 
which is everywhere paid to such an old 
age ! Do not let any one persuade you, 
young gentlemen, that it is of little ac- 
count. And do not forget that the 
foundation of vitality and endurance on 
which it must be built is laid in early 
life. One of America's most distin- 



The Scholar in PubHc Life 167 

ffuished scholars was frail and in feeble 
health in his youth, but well-directed ex- 
ercise gave tone and vigor and vitality. 
With robust health came increased 
mental power, and now for nearly half 
a century he has been an honored leader 
in his department of research. If he 
who achieves distinction may be envied, 
how much more should he be deemed 
fortunate who wears his laurels for many 
years ! 

The second lesson which I wish to 
draw from the career of Gladstone is 
the opportunity and the duty which polit- 
ical life offers to young men of the finest 
talent and culture. The scholar in poli- 
tics is an unfamiliar sight in this country. 
The selection of party candidates, the 
management of political campaigns and 
the shaping of party policies are gener- 
ally deemed too coarse and belligerent 
business to attract refined and scholarly 
men. Practical politics has become al- 
most a synonym for dubious deals and 



1 68 Work and Play 

trading. They bring one into close con- 
tact or sharp antagonism with very 
unattractive characters ; they expose 
him to misrepresentation and slander ; 
they present great temptations. But for 
precisely these reasons they need the up- 
lifting influence of young men of the high- 
est grade. It is time that the positions 
of power and responsibility should be 
wrested from the corrupt and incompetent 
and filled by men of ability and honor. 
And so the colleges w^elcome every move- 
ment which aims at the overthrow of a 
political boss or the education of the 
people in political freedom and righteous- 
ness. Every lover of liberty desires that 
the young men of thought and character, 
who year by year go forth from college 
halls, should be enlisted in defense of the 
nation's honor and welfare. We ap- 
plaud the youth who volunteers to follow 
the nation's flag and fight, if need be, on 
the field of battle ; but who shall say that 
he is less worthy who fights for the pre- 



The Scholar in Pubhc Life 169 

servation of the nation's integrity and 
honor at home? 

The men of the present generation 
are too much absorbed in their own af- 
fairs. Business and professional life are 
too engrossing ; no time remains for 
public problems. The spoilsman and the 
schemer have had control. Our relief 
from political evils depends upon our 
young men. We need a generous infu- 
sion into the body politic of clear-sighted 
observers and students of public affairs. 
Ignorance and apathy go hand in hand. 
If men were better informed they would 
be more interested. Few men become 
statesmen or even politicians who do not 
gain an interest in politics in early life. 
Humboldt once said: "Plant your re- 
forms in the schools ; formation is better 
than reformation ;" and in the same spirit 
the college exhorts her students and young 
graduates to be interested in politics. 
The problems of democratic government 
are neither few nor simple ; they require 



170 Work and Play 

profound study and should elicit lifelong 
enthusiasm. Most American statesmen 
of the better type began their political 
experience in their youth, seeming almost 
to inherit their career. 

Gladstone was trained to statecraft 
from his boyhood. He relates that when 
he was a lad of twelve, his father began 
for him a systematic course of instruc- 
tion in the science of government. An 
hour was devoted each day to a lesson 
in politics and finance. Guests at the 
Gladstone house were surprised to see 
the father, an eminent banker and a 
member of parliament, proposing grave 
and complicated problems, which the son 
examined and discussed with marvelous 
ability and enthusiasm. When, a few 
years later, he was a student at Eton his 
political training was continued, and 
when at Oxford he gained no small 
celebrity as a debater and orator. 

English politics and civil service were 
more corrupt in those days than ours 



The Scholar in Public Life 171 

have ever been ; but this only made him 
more eager to enter public life, and at 
the early age of tv^enty we find him sit- 
ting in parliament and tw^o years later he 
was named by Peel as junior lord of the 
treasury. He was a tireless worker and 
threw himself with ardor into the strug- 
gles of that troubled period of English 
history. It is not easy to exaggerate his 
work or the value of the services which 
then and all his life through he rendered 
to England and to civilization, but we 
fail to estimate them at their true worth 
if we forget that they were lifted far 
above the plane of self-seeking ambi- 
tion. His steadfast aim was to brincr 
Christian ideals into politics. His whole 
career was an attempt to reconcile poli- 
tics with the Sermon on the Mount. He 
boldly asserted that the state must have a 
conscience and the reforms which he 
proposed sought to carry legislation up 
to the level of ethical standards. His 
interest and his sympathies embraced the 



172 Work and Play 

world. He learned of the sufferings of 
prisoners in Naples, devoted a parlia- 
mentary recess to an investigation of 
their condition, saw these patriots in 
their dungeons, and then declared, in a 
letter of denunciation which aroused the 
world, that their treatment was a blot 
upon civilization and humanity. His 
utterances had the needed effect and, in 
after years, the Italians were wont to 
call him one of the founders of free Italy. 
And when, in the year 1896, the nations 
of Christian Europe looked with averted 
eyes while those terrible massacres were 
carried on in Armenia, it was the voice 
of the aged Gladstone which fitly charac- 
terized the ''great assassin" and com- 
pelled him to yield to the indignation of 
Christendom. 

And so, while we honor Gladstone, let 
us not fail to catch an inspiration from 
his example. Had he merely followed 
his scholarly tastes and preferences, we 
should never have heard of him in public 



The Scholar In PubHc Life 173 

life. He would have avoided its con- 
tamination and unseemly struggles. He 
would have devoted himself to the more 
congenial fields of literature, which 
offered him distinction without the attacks 
and reverses of politics. But how grand- 
ly has he been rewarded for his sacri- 
fice ! Devoting himself to the public 
good, he has gained a fame which kings 
and conquerors might envy. 

Could the young men of this genera- 
tion in America catch his spirit, our polit- 
ical ills would vanish. The wretched 
notion that the civil service is a sort of 
government ambulance in which the 
lame and the weary may ride, and that 
still more detestable theory that public 
office is a reward of party service, would 
pass away like a miasma before the sun. 
Our consuls and other representatives in 
foreign countries would cease to discredit 
us in the eyes of the world ; committees 
to investigate government frauds and 
scandals would no longer present humili- 



174 Work and Play 

ating reports, the righteousness which 
exalteth a nation would speedily come, 
and the hope of the Pilgrim and the 
Puritan would be realized. 



XI 

CASTLES IN SPAIN 



' ' Wlioi I could not sleep for cold 
1 had fire enough in my brai?i, 
And builded with roofs of gold 
My beautiful castles in Spain.''"' 

J. R. Lowell. 

We are sitch stuff as dreams are made oji.'''' 
William Shakespeare. 

■ Yotir yo2ing 7nen shall see visions.'''' 

Joel. 



XI 

CASTLES IN SPAIN 

piTZHUGH LUDLOW relates that 
in his boyhood, the drug-store of his 
friend Anderson possessed such a fasci- 
nation for him that he wanted to taste 
everything he found there. He spent 
many leisure hours examining myste- 
rious drugs, inquiring into their composi- 
tion and their effects. One day he dis- 
covered, among the new goods, a little 
jar labeled Canahis Indica. Pleased with 
its aromatic smell, he proceeded to inves- 
tigate its other properties. He learned 
from the dispensatory that it was famil- 
iarly known as hasheesh, was used in 
cases of lockjaw, and that it possessed 
an extraordinary power of producing 
dreams. He forthwith rolled up a good- 
sized pellet and swallowed it. 

A few hours later, as you will antici- 
13 



178 Work and Play 

pate, he fell into an ecstatic dream. The 
room in his modest home, where he was 
sitting, began to enlarge and to grow 
surprisingly beautiful ; the hall became 
an enchanting vista and the stairs a 
magnificent avenue up which he could 
triumphantly ascend. His delight and 
anticipations knew no bounds. No young 
man ever before possessed such talent, 
deserved such consideration or enjoyed 
such distinction. The rich, the gay, the 
famous hastened to do him honor. The 
very atmosphere was radiant with hope 
and promise. He was about to summon 
the poor and oppressed of all lands to 
receive the golden rain which dripped 
from his fingers, when the famil}^ physi- 
cian administered a timely sedative and 
relieved him of his heavy responsibility. 
Scarcely less extravagant and improb- 
able are the day-dreams and air-castles 
of many a boy as he looks eagerly for- 
ward into life. His pictures lack pro- 
portion ; his events are unreal ; his 



Castles in Spain 179 

projects are visionary. Many people 
deem such fancies worthless and look 
upon them much as they would upon the 
overwrought excitement of a hasheesh- 
eater. They are constantly exhorting 
us to be practical and warning us against 
vain hopes and illusions. Some of them 
would almost eliminate ima2;ination and 
poetry and bright fancies from our life. 
They would deprive youth of its ro- 
mance and fervor. They think it would 
thus avoid the temptations, mistakes and 
disappointments which an unfettered im- 
agination sometimes brings. 

But, for my part, I am sorry for the boy 
who has no day-dreams ; indeed, I am 
sorry for the man whose daily life is not 
cheered and brightened by many unreal 
fancies. It is true that his castles in the 
air may be as fictitious as the " Castles 
in Spain " of which George William 
Curtis has told us ; but like the castles in 
Spain they will be a source of perpetual 
delight, however fictitious they may be. 



i8o Work and Play 

Though he should live to be fourscore, 
I should wish that the Hght of glad an- 
ticipations might never cease to illumine 
his path. 

But we have a more serious reason to 
be sorry for the youth who has no day- 
dreams — a reason which is very funda- 
mental. All good work, all our best 
endeavors, all the worthy achievements 
of life, are born of aspiration. No man 
ever rises above his ideal ; high aims are 
the first condition of excellence. The 
man with low standards, the man with 
commonplace ideals and expectations, 
will do only commonplace work. If 
one's life is confined to the present, there 
is no room for dreams ; but if there is a 
Beyond in it, he will assuredly dream 
about it. If in life's morning he looks 
out upon a future which seems to rise 
peak above peak, he will long to climb 
them and scan the more distant horizon. 
The heart is not satisfied with the vision 
of to-day; it will again demand posses- 



Castles In Spain i8i 

sion when it sees the promise of to-mor- 
row. The dream of youth is a dream 
of gladness, success and honor ; and, 
let us hope, a dream of usefulness, 
nobility and consecration. 

The young man who does not think 
high things, whose imagination does not 
paint glowing pictures of what he hopes 
to be and to do, is training himself to be 
inferior, to be contented with the bald 
and sullen actualities of life. It is hope 
which leads to effort and hope springs 
from aspiration. There can be few 
worse misfortunes than to feel no aspira- 
tion to improve one's condition — to wear 
deeper and deeper the ruts of life with 
no desire to make it better, stronger or 
more useful. 

The great need of every student is 
ambition — the desire and determination 
to improve. A student without ambition 
is almost a contradiction of terms. The 
college can do but little for him. He 
needs to rouse himself and see the possi- 



1 82 Work and Play 

bilities which lie before him, to kindle 
within himself a great enthusiasm to at- 
tain them. He will not stop with dream- 
ing if he sees great deeds to be done. 

We become like that of which we 
think — like that on which the heart is 
fixed. The eagle soars far aloft because 
he wishes to ; the horse is fleet because 
he wants to be ; the athlete is supple and 
strong because he desires to be so ; each 
has developed his powers according to 
his wish. It is in this way that '* the 
child is father of the man." Thought 
is supreme and, under the divine com- 
mand, creates us w'hat we are. He who 
keeps before his mind the lofty powers 
of intellect and character which he 
would gain will one day find that they 
are his as certainly as training will de- 
velop the athlete's muscles ; and he who 
steadfastly holds in view the splendid 
thinsrs which he would som.e time do, 
will at length gaze upon them as his 
finished work. 



Castles in Spain 183 

And this is as truly natural — accord- 
ing to nature's laws — as the growth of a 
young man's stature. The difference is 
that one kind of growth comes in obedi- 
ence to his wish ; the other without 
regard to it. The dream, the aspiration, 
the purpose, become as truly a means 
of growth as are the digestion of the 
food or the circulation of the blood. 
The youth who truly aspires, who deter- 
mines to improve, will unconsciously 
seize the opportunities and use the means 
of improvement no less certainly and 
naturally than the flower selects from the 
atmosphere and the soil the materials of 
its growth. 

The opportunities, the sacred trust 
and responsibility of life, unfold grad- 
ually before most of us ; we see them 
dimly at first and from afar, or like one 
slowly awaking to new surroundings. 
But sometimes the aw^akening comes 
suddenly and after long delay, like the 
bursting forth of a great fountain. You 



184 Work and Play 

remember the story of Garfield and the 
self-discovery which came to him. 

He was employed, when a youth, on 
a canal-boat, and, in spite of the entrea- 
ties of his noble mother, was growing 
up in coarse and sluggish indifference. 
One dark midnight he was called up to 
take his turn at the bow as the boat was 
passing through one of the long stretches 
of slack-water on the Ohio and Pennsyl- 
vania canal. Mechanically and half 
asleep he began uncoiling a rope, when 
it caught in a tangle. He gave it a jerk, 
and then a harder jerk, and, as the knot 
gave way, he staggered backward and 
fell overboard into the deep, dark water. 
The boat glided on, brushing him aside as 
it passed. No human help was near, and 
only a miracle could save him. So the 
boy thought, as he instinctively clung to 
the rope which he held in his hand. But 
it slipped loosely off the coil, and he sank 
beneath the surface, and the boat left him 
far behind. At length he felt the rope 



Castles In Spain i85 

tighten in his grasp and hold firmly. 
Hand over hand he drew himself along 
and climbed on deck. Recovering from 
his shock, and surprised to find himself 
still alive, he examined the rope. An- 
other kink had caught in a crevice in the 
edge of the boat and saved him. The 
coil was nearly unwound ; only a few 
more yards and he would have clung to 
it in vain. 

Wondering how it could have hap- 
pened, he coiled the rope again, and 
tried to throw it into the crevice ; but it 
would not catch. Many times he tried 
to make it kink — six hundred, it is said 
— but it would kink no more. Then he 
sat down and thought. " I have thrown 
this rope," he reflected, "six hundred 
times, but I cannot make it catch. I 
might have thrown it six thousand. It 
is one chance in thousands which has 
saved my life. Providence, then, must 
think that it is worth saving, and I '11 not 
throw it away." Ere the first streaks of 



1 86 Work and Play 

dawn appeared, the horizon of his life 
had widened, and was lighted up with 
the rays of a brighter promise ; for his 
imagination was already weaving the 
beautiful day-dreams of what he would 
one day become. 

He left the boat at the end of the trip, 
and the world knows his history. From 
that day his heart was aglow with 
thoughts of the things he would do. He 
never ceased to be an idealist. In col- 
lege his enthusiasm gave new life to 
every interest. Traditions lingered long 
among the students of the enterprises 
which he origmated and the impetus 
which he imparted to them. It was his 
vivid imagination and the prompt execu- 
tion of its designs which made him the 
idol of the Army of the Cumberland ; 
and when his life was ebbing slowly 
away the whole civilized world awaited 
the end in sorrow, because it had learned 
to love a man whose dreams had lifted 
humanity to a higher plane. 



Castles in Spain 187 

It is thus with every great leader. It 
is the man with a lofty purpose, whose 
imagination never permits it to fade 
from his sight, that achieves great ends. 

Cyrus W. Field had in his boyhood a 
dream of wealth — but only as a means 
of service. He would be rich, and then 
he would do somethingr that should ben- 
efit mankind. He believed that when a 
man had accumulated a quarter of a mill- 
ion dollars he should withdraw from busi- 
ness and devote the remainder of his life 
to his fellow men. This sum was deemed 
wealth in those days ; it might not seem 
so now, but it doubtless appeared a vast 
sum to him as a country boy. He gained 
his wealth and was lookino- for a field of 
philanthropic service, when suddenl}^ his 
fortune was swept away. He built up 
another, and again retiring from busi- 
ness sought an opportunit}^ to contribute 
his share to the world's progress. He 
had been a friend of Joseph Henry and 
Professor Morse, and was glad to be- 



1 88 Work and Play 

come interested in the project of an 
Atlantic cable. One after another the 
original projectors of the cable with- 
drew. Discouragements and obstacles 
multiplied, but his faith never faltered. 
So long as Field lived it mattered little 
what other friends of the cable aban- 
doned it ; for with his enthusiasm and 
will behind it, the enterprise was sure to 
succeed. The honors which came to the 
founder of the Atlantic telegraph, and 
the contribution which the cable was to 
the progress of science and civilization, 
were the fruit of his dreams. There 
will be no high achrevement if there be 
no lofty ideal. 

William Lloyd Garrison and Gerrit 
Smith were dreamers. Men called them 
impractical, foolish, mad; but posterity 
will never cease to honor their memory. 

John Howard and Elizabeth Fry were 
dreaming fanatics, wasting their splendid 
talents, it was said, on criminals, paupers 
and imbeciles, worthy only of contempt. 



Castles in Spain 189 

But the waves of philanthropy which they 
set in motion now encircle the globe. 
The harsh and cruel treatment of the 
unfortunate classes has been swept away, 
and Christian nations are learning the 
lessons of pity and kindness. 

Let us cease to call the dreamer 
impractical. Milton, Tennyson, Long- 
fellow and Whittier were dreamers and 
seers, but who shall say that they were 
not practical, or that their fair visions 
have not brought comfort, joy and in- 
spiration to every lover of English verse? 
Gutenberg, Columbus, Newton and 
Franklin were visionaries, and so also 
were Watt and Fulton and Morse and 
Faradav, but what would our modern 
life be without their discoveries and in- 
ventions? 

And let us be thankful for the recog- 
nition of the ideal which has come in our 
day. Half a century ago ** works of 
fiction " were condemned as dangerous 
to the moral health of the community. 



igo Work and Play 

They created an imaginary world, it 
was said, peopled with unreal men and 
women, whose experiences were not 
those of real life. But before the preju- 
dice against such books had passed 
away. Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared, 
and was read by millions on both sides 
of the Atlantic. In every intelligent 
home in England and America, Uncle 
Tom's scarred and furrowed face was 
familiar, and had carried an ideal of 
wrong, of suffering and of patience 
which had touched the heart of the 
world. From that hour slavery was 
condemned and must cease. 

In like manner the stories of Dickens, 
Kingsley and many other authors have 
swept away great evils, or fired the imag- 
ination of youth to desire and to do great 
things. 

We are told, in the sacred story, that 
the Lord appeared to Solomon one night 
in a dream, and said, " Ask what I shall 
give thee." Men have read this passage 



Castles In Spain 191 

for ages, carelessly or wonderingly, and 
have said it was a miracle. But is not 
the miracle repeated in the history of 
every 3^outh ? Does not God thus reveal 
himself now in the secret wish, and tell 
us each to ask what we will? Does not 
each become the arbiter of his own for- 
tune? 

We also read that God was pleased 
with Solomon because he suppressed 
vain and selfish wishes, and asked for 
broad-minded wisdom and the ability to 
make his life count for the benefit of his 
people. And so our lesson would be in- 
complete if we failed to note how much 
depends upon the moral character of our 
dreams. Out of the heart are the is- 
sues of life. If our imaginings are low, 
our longings unclean, we will assuredly 
grow in likeness to the ideals and aims 
which we cherish. And the student 
whose enthusiasm kindles for true ex- 
cellence, for keener intellect, for better 
work, will no less certainly find his de- 



192 Work and Play- 

sires realized. Day by day he will, in a 
sense, answer his own prayers. He will 
gain the desired excellence, and, if he 
really seeks it, the highest type of man- 
hood and integrity. The dream which 
he loves to cherish will be fulfilled. 
Only let him choose wisely, for he will 
inherit the kingdom of which he is the 
rightful heir. 



XII 
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 



* ' Our pleasures and our discontents 
Arc rounds by which we may ascend y- 

H. W. Longfellow. 

Cultivate the physical exclusively , and you have 
aft athlete or a savage ; the moral only, a?id you 
have ati enthusiast or a maniac ; the intellecttial 
only, and yoit have a diseased oddity — it may be a 
7no)istcr. It is only by wisely training all three to- 
gether that the co?nplete man is formed. 

Samuel Smiles. 



XII 

WHAT IS EDUCATION 

TylyTHY are we in college? What do 
we hope to gain by spending four 
years in study? Do the benefits justify 
us in giving so much time to it? College 
officers are often consulted by students 
with reference to the choice of electives, 
or the value of certain studies. In such 
conversations, doubt is sometimes sug- 
gested concerning the utilit}^ of a col- 
lege course or of certain parts of it. 
Vague or mistaken ideas are disclosed 
on the subject of education and what it 
should yield. Fundamental aims are 
overlooked ; secondary or incidental ben- 
efits are exaggerated. 

It may interest you to know that ele- 
mentary education is likewise called in 
question and that its scope and methods 
are sharply criticized. President Eliot 



196 Work and Play 

declared in an article in the Forum^ not 
long ago, that there was serious and 
widespread disappointment at the results 
of popular education ; that it had failed 
to promote general contentment and hap- 
piness, that it did not lead to good mor- 
als, and that it did not even secure gen- 
eral intelligence. The daily press has 
abounded for years with criticisms of the 
schools which, if less sweeping, have 
been no less positive. While these at- 
tacks have been aimed especially at the 
public schools, they apply in a degree 
to all education and suggest that we 
ought to inquire what are the essentials 
in education. We need not consider 
these criticisms further than to note the 
boundless faith which they evince in the 
power of education. If they are half as 
important as is alleged, then the school- 
master holds the destiny of the nation in 
his hand to an extent which he has 
scarcely realized. Little is left, it would 
seem, for the church or the Sunday- 



What Is Education 197 

school or the printing-press, or even the 
home, to do. 

But while the school is only one of the 
uplifting forces of society, we certainly 
wish that it should yield for us the best 
results possible ; and we know that it can 
only do this when we understand its pur- 
pose and do our part to promote it. The 
college is one of the most important of 
the influences which mould the man. 
What are the ends which it is designed 
to promote? What may we expect to 
get out of our four years in college? 

The best education is the hio-hest de- 
velopment of the individual in all his 
powers. The college aims to afford the 
means and conditions of such a develop- 
ment. New institutions have arisen in 
recent years which aim to meet new and 
specific wants ; the organization and 
work of the American college have also 
been changed ; but its spirit and pur- 
pose have remained constant from its 
very beginning. Its graduates are to be 



198 Work and Play 

the thinkers and advisers of the commu- 
nities in which they live. They need 
the best possible preparation for these 
great responsibilities. They should be 
men of strength, men of culture, men of 
character. They should consciously 
seek in their college days to secure this 
equipment. 

I. The first requisite in a leader is 
strength. Strength presses to the front; 
weakness retreats to the rear. Strength 
begets courage and confidence ; weak- 
ness brings distrust and defeat. Even 
physical strength is universally admired. 
With what breathless interest and enthu- 
siasm do great crowds watch a well- 
fought game of football ! How they 
applaud every strong, quick dash ! A 
dozen years ago in a little New England 
village, a company of workmen were 
building a house. The timbers had just 
been raised and the men were walking 
around on them in their work, when one 
of them made a misstep and fell. A 



What Is Education 199 

fellow workman at his side saw the fall 
and with marvelous swiftness and 
strength threw out his hand, caught 
his comrade and, at the risk of his own 
life, lifted him to the timber again. It 
was a noble feat of strength, and the 
carpenters in that little town tell of it 
with pride to this day. Every nation of 
the world cherishes in song and story its 
brave, strong men. 

If we turn to the realm of mind, we 
find our admiration rising still higher. 
Strength of intellect surpasses strength 
of body as mind outranks matter. Brute 
force counts for but little in the presence 
of man's inventions. A crowd of college 
boys and their friends applaud when one 
of their comrades breaks through the 
opposing line or makes a successful run 
on the football field, but the whole world 
honors the man of intellectual genius. 
It cherishes great masterpieces in litera- 
ture and art and trains its youth by a 
study of the classics which have come 



200 Work and Play 

down to us from andquity. Mental dis- 
cipline must unite with training of nerve 
and muscle, if we would secure a robust 
and wholesome manhood. 

The college is a place where young 
men should learn to apply themselves — 
to face and overcome difficulties ; a place 
to acquire habits of industry, of concen- 
tration, of earnest work. This college 
believes, with Cicero, that " more men 
are ennobled by study than by nature," 
and that if it is to have alumni whom it 
will delight to honor in the future, it 
must give them, while students, courses 
of instruction and study which will com- 
pel their respect. Therefore it says to 
every young man : Find your purpose ; 
grasp it ; throw heart and soul into it ; 
train every power, that you may achieve 
it. Let your life sweep out along the 
line of highest promise, and the hope, 
the aspiration, the strength which buoy 
it will strengthen and enrich every life 
which it touches. No one can uplift 



What is Education 201 

the Hves of other men until he has a pos- 
itive Hfe of his own. If college-trained 
men are to be leaders, they must be men 
of earnest purpose, men of strength. 

2. But no college man may content 
himself with this. Liberal culture is 
also necessary. Intensity alone tends to 
narrowness. Strength of body or of in- 
tellect does not in itself constitute a sym- 
metrical manhood. The man of one 
idea may be impractical ; he cannot be 
broad and catholic. Education must do 
more than train specialists. Who has 
not admired the skill while he has pitied 
the limitations of such men? Their con- 
centration of interest disqualifies them 
for the broader aspects of life. 

*' Beware of the man of one book," 
says Montaigne. He who reads but one 
book may be a hard man to encounter ; 
his precise and positive knowledge may 
be irresistible along its own line ; but his 
interest and sympathy will be as narrow. 
He will run his own little round with 



202 Work and Play 

ease and certainty ; outside of it he will 
be at constant disadvantage. Napoleon 
appointed Laplace, the great mathema- 
tician, minister of finance. He failed. 
Napoleon said of him that he carried the 
spirit of the infinitesimal calculus into 
every aff'air of State. He could look 
at a subject from no other standpoint. 
Such a man may be an expert in his 
own department, as quick and as sharp 
as a needle ; but like the needle, his 
keenness is the result of his narrowness. 
You need an education which will broaden 
your life by enlarging your sympathies 
as well as your knowledge ; an educa- 
tion which will bring the rich into sym- 
pathy with the poor, the employer with 
the workman, the believer with the 
doubter. 

Let the college student, then, read 
many books. Let him explore the treas- 
ures of all departments of literature, and, 
rising above selfish aims, deepen his 
interest in unseen things. Let him catch 



What is Education 203 

the spirit of the great masters of thought, 
and learn to enjoy their companionship. 
In the graceful words of James Russell 
Lowell, " Let it be the hope of the col- 
lege to make a gentleman of every youth 
who is put under its charge, a man of 
culture, a man of intellectual resource, 
a man of public spirit, a man of refine- 
ment, with that good taste which is the 
conscience of the mind and that con- 
science which is the good taste of the 
soul." When this has been accomplished, 
my friends, you may safely become *' men 
of otie book." 

A vigorous mind must have its stor- 
ing period. You can draw no water out 
of an empty cistern. In early life the ca- 
pacity for absorbing knowledge is large. 
Facts and ideas are quickly incorporated 
into the habits of thought. The youth of 
active mind rapidly gathers facts, im- 
pressions, tastes, which become the 
foundation of his future work. Better 
that he should read too many books 



204 Work and Play 

than too few. Better that his interest 
should flit from one subject to another 
than that he should train himself to indo- 
lence and apathy. 

Therefore the college says to its stu- 
dents : Foster your intellectual cravings 
and minister to them with the best which 
science and literature afford. Lay broad 
and deep the foundations of your educa- 
tional house. Rear it in comely propor- 
tions. Take time to fashion and finish it 
in every part. Study the humanities ; 
learn the lessons of history ; catch the 
inspiration of grand and noble lives. 
Add to your strength grace and beauty, 
and 3^our college days will yield you an 
ever-increasing revenue of pleasure and 
of power. 

3. The third essential in a symmetri- 
cal manhood is character. Strength and 
beauty will fail of their highest realiza- 
tion if a worthy motive is lacking. The 
world is full of people who are seeking 
high positions instead of fitness to fill 



What is Education 205 

them. The true student aims first at 
good preparation — to become his best 
self. He does not permit his ambition 
to fix upon some coveted position when 
it ought rather to seek capacity to fill it. 
The young man who diligently makes 
the most of his opportunities and be- 
comes fitted for a station of honor and 
usefulness is the man who will get the 
place and adorn it. Do not believe the 
pessimism which would teach you other- 
wise. The " royal road " to success is 
through character and manliness. 

By character we mean integrity, moral 
uprightness, spiritual strength, the reach- 
ing out of the soul towards God. We 
also mean that quality in a man which 
begets confidence and respect. 

College life should foster this tran- 
scendent power. It trains to self-reliance ; 
let it also train to integrity and genuine- 
ness. It teaches a student to be himself, 
to despise imitations and shams ; let it 
also teach him to be loyal to his convic- 



2o6 Work and Play 

tions, to recognize and obey the voice of 
dut}^ Let it teach him that the govern- 
ment of one's self is the only true free- 
dom. Moral discipline is as necessary 
as intellectual discipline ; it is simply 
storing up thought and action into char- 
acter. It teaches us to rise above im- 
pulse, to be self-restrained, self-balanced, 
to bring to the tribunal of reason the con- 
flicting claims of pleasure and of duty. 
Moral discipline trains to courage. It 
teaches a man to dismiss his fears by 
calmly facing them ; it enables him to 
see that the path of safety, no less than 
of honor, lies in straightforward truth- 
fulness and sincerity, that a man's real 
danger is in disloyalty to himself. Moral 
discipline teaches the marvelous power 
of work. It enables a man to hold the 
unsolved problems of life patiently in his 
grasp till their difficulties disappear ; it 
sends him to his daily task with a joyful 
mind, the master, not the slave, of his 
occupation. 



What is Education 207 

The highest manifestation of moral 
growth is the Christlike spirit. Educa- 
tion fails short of its true end if the 
learner does not sit at the feet of the 
great Teacher. Religion does not con- 
sist in emotion ; it is an upward move- 
ment of the whole nature. The first and 
great commandment is to love with all 
the heart and soul and mind. A full 
manhood unites worship with work. 

I have thus endeavored, young gentle- 
men, to outline the educational ends 
which I would have you set before your- 
selves. Yours are to be selected lives ; 
make the most of them. Prepare to be 
leaders in the fields of opportunity which 
await you. The future of our country 
depends upon its earnest, thoughtful 
men. Our safety will not be found in 
the genius of some great man, but in the 
presence in all our communities of trained 
men, men of strength, men of wisdom, 
men of character. These are the true 
rulers of the people. Every free 



2o8 Work and Play 

country must be governed by an aristoc- 
racy ; not an aristocracy of blood or of 
fashion ; not an aristocracy of talent 
only ; but an aristocracy of character. 
This is the true heraldry. 



Mar- 16 1901 



JUN 29 1900 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



9 792 882 7 




